Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I wasn’t dead.

Not only was I not dead, I actually wasn’t even that badly injured.

When Ah Qing realized I’d stepped in front of him, he immediately tried to pull the blade back at the very last second. Thanks to the huge momentum behind the strike, he couldn’t stop it completely, but the knife only went in a tiny, shallow bit.

So the only reason I reacted so dramatically was because I faint at the sight of blood…

When I woke up again, I was lying in the largest room in the mansion. The scent of incense was soothing. I turned my head and saw Chu Ziye sitting by my bed, one hand propped on the edge of the bed to support his head. He had already fallen asleep.

I touched him lightly, and he woke up.

“Why did you save me?”

He looked at me quietly. Chu Ziye had a beautiful pair of eyes, dark as a lake beneath the night sky. In that moment, I felt as if I were about to fall into that lake.

“What why is there…” I fell silent for a long while, unsure how to explain the whole mess of trouble I’d brought on myself. Finally, inspiration struck, and I came up with an answer.

“Because I’m the Head of Mansion Security!”

What a diligent, responsible answer. Who could possibly fail to be moved by my professional dedication?

Chu Ziye was speechless for quite some time. A moment later, he called for his subordinates. “It’s time to eat. Have Miss Liu prepare the meal.”

It was only much, much later that I learned what had gone through Chu Ziye’s mind after he saw me take that knife for him.

In his eyes, I was an orphan girl from the martial world. Since no one had cared for me or loved me growing up, and since I had never received a proper education, I had naturally strayed down the wrong path and become an assassin who lived by the blade. The Empress had offered ten thousand taels of fine silver and bought my service, sending me to Prince Lin’s Mansion to carry out an assassination plot.

However, my conscience had not yet been extinguished. I had been unable to bring myself to act, so I decided to hide within the mansion first. Who could have known that the longer I stayed undercover, the better everyone in the mansion treated me, and the more I was moved by them? For the first time in my life, I experienced the warmth of a home.

Then, just at that moment, the Empress put even more pressure on me and sent a new killer, forcing me to carry out the assassination as soon as possible. Trapped in a dilemma, I was coerced into taking part in the plan. But at the final moment, I still resolutely chose the righteous path, completing my own redemption by throwing myself in front of the blade.

That, in Chu Ziye’s mind, was the perfectly reasonable explanation for my entire string of utterly nonsensical actions.

If I had known that was how he understood my behavior, I would have been so shaken by that boundless, all-loving worldview that my whole family tree would have trembled with me.

But Chu Ziye did not tell me any of this at the time. Meanwhile, when I discovered that he had specifically instructed Liu Xiaoman to cook, my heart leaped with joy.

I couldn’t help it. My attention was still focused on matching up the male and female leads so I could hurry back to the real world.

I observed Chu Ziye for several days and found that at every meal, he only ate dishes made by Liu Xiaoman. Sometimes, he would even personally go to the rear kitchen and quietly watch Liu Xiaoman cook.

I was ecstatic. Could it be that while I was unconscious, Liu Xiaoman and Chu Ziye had already started their romance arc?

Truly, after searching high and low to no avail, it had fallen right into my lap!

I watched from the sidelines for a few days, but the more I watched, the more anxious I became. Chu Ziye had probably already developed a secret crush on Liu Xiaoman, but he showed no sign of it whatsoever. He was still an entire iceberg of a man. At this rate, even if their romance arc dragged on for another two thousand seven hundred chapters, who knew whether they’d even make it to holding hands?

If you love her, tell her! What is the point of keeping it locked up in your heart? But I could also see it now: Chu Ziye was the standard straight man of steel. He probably had no idea how to pursue a girl.

In that case, it was time for me, Lu “Top-Tier Romance Master” “First-Class Theoretical Expert” “One-Hundred-Percent Success-Rate Wingwoman” Xiaoshuang, to make my entrance.

I resolved to teach Chu Ziye every flirting technique I knew. I refused to believe I couldn’t help him win over the female lead.