Chapter 4

Chapter 4

But getting into the palace would be difficult.

Mu Yuchang couldn’t expose his identity, or he would end up like the rest of his clan.

I tied my hair up haphazardly, put on ill-fitting coarse clothes, and followed Zhu Qingyun out every day to ask around for news from the palace.

My clothes became filthy beyond recognition, and the bruises on my face grew darker and darker.

Sometimes they would fade, only for fresh wounds to bloom the next day.

There was no helping it. The more battered my face looked, the easier it was to hide my features.

Back when I hadn’t disguised myself, sharp-eyed Beidi men would spot me at once.

Three or four burly soldiers surrounded me, their fishy-smelling hands groping all over me as they let out lewd, sinister laughs.

Even at a time like that, I actually found myself fantasizing that Father, Mother, Grandfather, and Grandmother would suddenly appear in a fury, beat these men to a pulp, and then carry me away, their hearts aching for me.

Unfortunately, that would never come true.

All that happened was that a reckless little thief took advantage of the soldiers molesting me to snatch one of their money pouches.

His technique was clumsy, too, and he startled them.

They let go of me and turned to give chase.

I hurried back, only to discover that Mu Yuchang was not in the room.

It was not until sunset that he limped back in.

His clothes hung loose on him as well, and they gave off a foul stench.

I asked him, “Why did you strip clothes off a dead man to wear?”

After all these days, I could already tell with ease what the smell of a corpse was.

Whenever we went out to receive steamed buns and thin congee, we would occasionally have to step around one or two people lying stiff on the stone road.

The Beidi soldiers would not collect their bodies.

More often than not, it was the commoners of Ying’an Prefecture who gathered firewood and piled the bodies together to burn them.

So the moment Mu Yuchang came in, I recognized that choking smell at once.

Mu Yuchang said, “The Beidi wouldn’t stop chasing me. I had no choice but to change what I was wearing.”

I didn’t ask further. I only noticed that his build was very similar to that little thief’s, then went to draw a bucket of clear water from the well so he could wash himself.

After wandering among the people for so many days, Mu Yuchang’s temper had been worn down. The arrogance he had when he first arrived was gone. Now he would eat steamed buns dusted with ash, and he would pour ice-cold water over himself without complaint.

But his leg was injured. At the very least, it needed to be treated.

When Zhu Qingyun returned, I begged him to see if any medical halls were still open.

He waved his hand and said the medicinal herbs had long since been looted clean. Then he looked me over carefully and asked, “How did you end up in such a sorry state?”

I didn’t hide anything from him. Like pouring beans from a bamboo tube, I spilled out every unlucky thing that had happened to me that day.

Zhu Qingyun thought it over and said my face was too fair and clean. We would need to do a little more work on it.

Mu Yuchang leaned in and stared at me. “Mm. It is fair and clean.”

So from then on, my face was always covered in blue and purple bruises.

Those hunting eyes finally stopped lingering on me.

When I went out day to day, I no longer had to be quite so furtive.

Soon, I heard that the Beidi had allowed the Grand Princess to leave the palace once, to visit the Princess Residence and take a few looks at her child.

On the road she had to pass, I once again fell in front of her carriage.

But this time, that pair of delicate hands did not reach out.