Stab to Death, I Cannot Have a Weakness - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I froze for another moment.

Then I forced myself to swallow the entire lychee whole.

Cupping my hands, I said, “Your Majesty truly is a man of deep feeling and loyalty.”

Only then did Xiao Yu put away that scalp-prickling smile.

He went on peeling lychees for me.

His tone was lazy and unhurried.

“I was teasing you. You even dared to sit on the dragon throne while making the emperor stand. I thought you might have a little more nerve than that.”

Me: “…”

Me: “I don’t know why, but I’m suddenly curious which is harder-the Imperial Seal of the Realm, or your head.”

Xiao Yu ignored my threat and continued, “That best friend of yours-the one who used to take over my seat after class to chat with you, the one with the explosive temper.”

“You mean Mu Yaoyao?” I immediately cut in.

“Right.”

Xiao Yu glanced up at the personal silk handkerchief I’d laid on the table.

It was embroidered all over in cipher with every lead I’d managed to gather over the past four years about where the others might be.

“Once we find her, I can make her a managing matron. From then on, she can slap whoever she wants and steal whatever stools she likes.”

I stared for a beat, then promptly gave him a thumbs-up. “Your Majesty is wise!”

The corner of Xiao Yu’s mouth curved. He stuffed another piece of crystal-clear lychee flesh into my mouth.

“Good taste. A reward for you.”

This time, I chewed slowly for a long while, but in the end, my mouth just couldn’t stay idle.

When I spoke again, I used that long-lost form of address.

“Um… deskmate.”

Xiao Yu paused slightly, then lowered his eyes and answered as naturally as ever, “Hm?”

“There’s something I need to tell you. Don’t tell anyone else.”

“Mm.”

“I actually entered the palace to assassinate you.”

Chapter 2

Xiao Yu’s hands stilled in the middle of peeling a lychee.

He looked up and stared at me.

I met his gaze with utter sincerity.

There was nothing I could do about it. I was the kind of person who talked too much and loved throwing straight balls.

I used straight balls to take everyone down. Sometimes that included myself.

Xiao Yu lowered his head again.

He finished peeling that lychee and brought the flesh to my lips.

“Eat.”

“Oh, oh, okay.”

I ate the lychee, so my words came out a little muffled.

“Mm, anyway, here’s what happened. Before Xiao Yu… I mean, before you, wasn’t there a deposed crown prince?”

“My father in name, the current Right Chancellor, was a hidden supporter of the Former Crown Prince’s faction. Now that the Left Chancellor’s faction has risen to power, he’s jealous and unwilling to accept it. He’s also afraid you might settle accounts with him one day, so he and a group of his cronies started plotting something big.”

“He didn’t send me, his daughter, into the palace for any imperial favor. He wanted me to find a chance to poison you.”

“Once you’re dead, they’ll take a forged imperial edict and welcome the Former Crown Prince back. Then they’ll be founding contributors with the merit of following the dragon, and they’ll be able to grow bigger and stronger again.”

Xiao Yu listened quietly, giving an occasional “Mm.”

Peel the shell. Remove the pit. Hand it over.

While I was tattling, he fed me another dozen or so.

The lychees really were delicious.

In the past, they had been ordinary fruit I could buy with a trip to the supermarket. After transmigrating, I had never eaten them again.

Only after transmigrating did I realize that the ordinary life I used to comfort myself about by saying “plain and simple is true happiness” had actually been fit for an emperor.

But when the twentieth large, round tribute lychee was brought to my mouth, I still puffed out my cheeks and waved my hand.

“Enough, enough. They’re already up to my throat.”

Xiao Yu’s hand stopped in midair. He stared at my face.

“Then why aren’t you smiling?”

I froze, not understanding. “Smiling about what?”

Xiao Yu turned his gaze slightly aside and muttered,

“A rider raises red dust and the consort smiles; no one knows it’s lychees that have arrived. And now you’ve already got so many lychees in your mouth.”

Me: “…”

Seriously, dude?

Here I was, putting my head on the line to discuss the very serious matter of Nine-Clan Elimination.

And all you could think about was making a consort smile?

But before I could get the jab out, the young emperor looked over again.

His brows and eyes still held the outline of the boy I remembered, only deeper now, more defined.

At that moment, he was leaning against the dragon desk, somehow giving off an indescribable sense of loneliness.

“From the moment we met until now… you haven’t smiled at me once.”

Warm sunlight slanted through the Imperial Study.

Xiao Yu and I, one seated and one standing, stared at each other in silence for a moment.

Then we both whipped our heads away in different directions at the same time.

Wh-what was that?

We were old classmates. Why suddenly get all sentimental?

I wasn’t smiling, of course, not because I was born humorless, nor because I was unhappy to see an old classmate.

In fact, long before I was wrapped up like a spring roll and delivered to the dragon bed,

I had already prepared myself to die.

There was no way I would sleep with a strange man for someone else’s benefit.

Dying sooner or later was still dying. I might as well strike first. Whether assassinating the emperor would leave me reviled for all eternity or praised through the ages could be left for posterity to decide.

It wasn’t until I saw Xiao Yu, now an emperor, and heard him say that familiar string of classmates’ names,

that I suddenly felt as if I had awakened from a nightmare.

That was why I had exposed my identity as an assassin without the slightest hesitation.

Even so, the blade hanging over my head had not been removed.

Four years had passed since I transmigrated here. In name, I was the legitimate daughter of the prime minister.

But that scumbag father of mine, also in name, hated my current mother.

He believed she had stolen the position of principal wife and wronged the concubine he cherished above all else.

And so it was the same old script: favor the concubine, neglect the wife, hate the child because you hate the mother.

The people in the estate were all experts at reading the wind. They trampled on me to curry favor with the younger siblings born of that concubine.

When I first transmigrated over, I was still full of a modern person’s backbone.

I couldn’t tolerate the slightest loss.

If my illegitimate sister cursed me, I cursed back. If my illegitimate brother hit me, I hit back.

Once, my illegitimate sister slapped me, and I had barely slapped her twice in return

when my illegitimate brother suddenly charged over. The two of them dragged me into the lotus pond together.

In the dead of winter, I struggled alone in the icy water,

listening to the siblings on the bank laugh and make bets on whether I would drown first or freeze to death first.

It was my mother who rushed over in the end, sobbing as she knelt and begged for someone to save me.

Afterward, I fell gravely ill. My scumbag father blamed me instead.

He said my words and actions were frivolous and that I had led my younger brother and sister astray.

Then he punished me by making me kneel in the ancestral hall all night.

In that moment,

I truly realized that this era devoured people whole and spat out no bones.

“…And that scumbag father of mine is probably well aware that I hate him.”

“So before I entered the palace this time, to prevent me from disobeying, he forced me to drink a slow-acting poison.”

“If I don’t get the special antidote from him every month, within seven days my intestines will rupture and I’ll die in agony.”

Having sold out my father in one breath, I turned my head back.

Only to find Xiao Yu staring at me.

And only then did I follow his gaze and realize I had been trembling uncontrollably this entire time.

Xiao Yu’s pitch-black eyes had frozen over completely.

Mixed within them was a viciousness and hostility I had never seen before.

“Gu Rui.”

He crouched down and said softly, as if making a vow,

“Just wait. We will get justice for you.”