Chapter 96
Chapter 96
“I knew that after something like that happened, Miss would do nothing but grieve in silence…”
“She would never go to the Crown Prince to ask him for an explanation, to demand the truth…”
“She would not even say anything to me…”
As the eldest legitimate daughter of a commandery duke’s household, Tang Yuelang had been adored and indulged since childhood.
She was proud by nature and would never lower her head or yield.
Even if her heart was bleeding, she would still put on a face of utter indifference.
Outsiders might call her magnanimous.
But Linglong knew that inside, her mistress was already caught in a desolate storm, devastated beyond recognition.
And so, in secret, she made a decision.
She would request an audience with the Crown Prince and, on behalf of her mistress, ask for a clear answer.
That night, after receiving word that the Crown Prince had returned to the palace, Linglong quietly went to Weiyang Hall. She remembered very clearly that there were no attendants standing guard at the entrance then.
With no one there to announce her arrival, she could only walk in on her own.
In the past, her mistress would occasionally make some sweets by hand and have her deliver them to Yongqing Study or Weiyang Hall.
His Highness the Crown Prince, out of affection for her mistress, had always treated Linglong with great ease as well.
Many times, she had walked in carrying a food box without needing to be announced.
The Crown Prince had never blamed her for being discourteous. He had even excused her from making formal greetings.
Now, stepping into the empty palace hall, Linglong inexplicably began to miss the Crown Prince of the past.
She, too, was filled with grievances and wanted to speak them on her mistress’s behalf.
But even after she had walked all the way to the desk where the Crown Prince usually sat, there was still no sign of him.
Linglong called out instinctively, “His Highness the Crown Prince?”
The palace hall stretched deep and silent. No one answered.
Yet in the next second, she heard a scroll on the desk fall to the floor with a sharp slap.
Then a strange gust of wind rose out of nowhere, sending the papers on the desk rustling loudly.
The scene was so eerie that Linglong was at a loss for a moment, fear creeping over her.
She instinctively wanted to leave, but then came another crisp sound, as though something had rolled to her feet.
When she looked down, she saw that it was actually a pearl the size of a pigeon egg.
In the dim palace hall, that pearl looked extraordinarily bright.
For an instant, it was as if some strange force compelled her. She bent down and picked the pearl up from the floor.
Then she turned around and saw the Crown Prince standing motionless behind her.
Crown Prince Zhao Li looked at her with a faint, ambiguous smile and asked, “Do you like it?”
Linglong only felt that there was something inexplicably bewitching in his voice as it reached her ears.
She did not dare answer. She hurriedly placed the pearl on the desk and was just about to kneel in obeisance.
But then a hand gently supported her.
Not by the hand, but at the waist.
The excessive intimacy made Linglong tremble all over. She instinctively tried to pull away, only for the Crown Prince to wrap his arms around her and hold her against him.
In that instant, her mind went completely blank. But she quickly came back to herself and tried to struggle free.
The Crown Prince, however, held her even tighter from behind.
“If you like it, I can give it to you.”
He held the pearl in his palm and brought it before her. His eyes, like the pearl, shone with a brilliant light.
Linglong hastily shook her head. “No, His Highness the Crown Prince, this servant does not want it!”
“You don’t?”
The Crown Prince curled his lips in a smile and said, “If you don’t want it, then what did you come here for?”
Linglong explained, “This servant… came for the Crown Princess!”
“The Crown Princess…”
At the mention of his lawful wife, the Crown Prince instead let out a scoff. “Did she send you?”
“No. This servant came of her own accord!”
Gathering her courage, she continued, “His Highness the Crown Prince has not gone to Chenghua Hall for a very long time. Her Highness the Crown Princess misses you dearly.”
“Has Your Highness forgotten? In the past, you would go there every day to have dinner with the Crown Princess and stroll through the gardens together…”
“Why is it now…”
Before she could finish speaking, the Crown Prince suddenly swept her up by the waist and carried her toward the inner hall.
Linglong was terrified. As she struggled, she vaguely saw a familiar figure flickering in and out of sight by the doorway.
“No, His Highness the Crown Prince!”
She screamed with all her strength as the clothes on her body began to be torn apart.
The Crown Prince acted as if he heard nothing. He threw her onto the wide canopied bed in the inner hall.
The moment he pressed down over her, Linglong felt despair wash over her.
Then she saw, even more clearly, a figure standing in the shadows, watching it all with cold indifference.
It was her mistress…
She had come!
Linglong cried out, “My lady! My lady!”
The person in the shadows ignored her completely.
Linglong burst into anxious sobs. She felt a chill against her front and realized her clothes were gone. She was utterly exposed.
The humiliation made her struggle even harder.
Then the weight pinning her down vanished.
The Crown Prince released her.
Linglong all but rolled and scrambled off the bed. Stumbling through the hall, she searched for her mistress’s figure.
All of a sudden, she saw a gleaming dagger.
“My lady…”
The one holding the dagger was Tang Yuelang.
Her face was expressionless, her eyes dull and empty, as she approached Linglong step by step.
Linglong did not even have time to say another word before that sharp blade plunged into her chest.
Blood splashed onto Tang Yuelang’s face, but she remained unmoved. She even stabbed again and again, driving the blade in repeatedly, each thrust swift and vicious.
Linglong watched everything before her in disbelief.
And in the moment she fell to the ground, she actually saw a strange shadow appear behind her mistress.
“I saw that shadow clearly. It was controlling my lady…”
Even now, recalling what had happened before her death, Linglong could not help trembling despite being a ghost.
It was precisely that shadow, and the words she had never had the chance to speak, that left her unable to rest in peace.
On the way to have her body carried to Qianqiu Garden for burial, a young eunuch’s carelessness caused the corpse to be exposed, and a pearl hairpin fell from it.
Her resentment attached itself to that pearl hairpin, turning her into a wisp of Vengeful Spirit.
Driven by the obsession she had held in life, Linglong found her way back to Chenghua Hall. All she wanted was a chance to tell her mistress the truth.
Unfortunately, the living and the dead were divided by yin and yang. Tang Yuelang could not see her at all.
Unwilling to give up, she began lingering in Chenghua Hall, only to discover that at some point, the hall had gained a current of Yin-Sha Qi that belonged only to a Vengeful Ghost.
After searching for a long time, Linglong finally found something unusual in front of Tang Yuelang’s dressing table.
A bead.
It was exactly the same as the one in Weiyang Hall.
Linglong knew that something wicked had to be hidden inside that bead. Some Evil Entity wanted to harm her mistress!
Sure enough, one night, Tang Yuelang, who had been sound asleep, suddenly sat up.
Like a specter, she quietly walked out of the palace hall and headed straight for Qianqiu Garden.
Seeing this, Linglong hurried after her. As they passed Yuedu Bridge, she was shocked to discover that another shadow had appeared behind her mistress, exactly like the one she had seen before she died.
Driven by that shadow, Tang Yuelang killed a palace maid in Qianqiu Garden.
But this time, she did not use a dagger. She used her own hand.
Linglong saw it with her own eyes: her mistress, like a Vengeful Ghost, thrust her hand straight through the palace maid’s chest.
Blood from the heart splattered out, causing the Baleful Qi around the shadow to grow even more intense.
Only then did Linglong understand. That ghostly thing was clearly using her mistress!
People died one after another inside the Eastern Palace.
Many began to whisper that Linglong’s ghost was causing trouble.
But Linglong knew exactly why those people had died.
Of course, Tang Yuelang gradually began to realize something was wrong with her as well.
She started hearing whispers by her ear. Sometimes, when she sat before the mirror doing her makeup, she would even catch a glimpse of a figure standing behind her.
Something was clinging to her…
At first, she thought it was Linglong’s ghost coming to take revenge on her.
Until one night, she woke with a start and saw a shadow pressing down on top of her, clinging tightly to her body.
An icy sensation roamed over her limbs, trying to burrow into her flesh and bones.
That eerie scene made her realize at once that her body had already been targeted!
And it was at that moment that Tang Yuelang saw another dark shadow behind the first, desperately trying to stop the ghostly thing from invading her body.