The Villain's Foremost Treacherous Courtier - Chapter 2

The scent of dunou incense was even stronger in Shen Ji’s bedchamber. Smoke curled from the burner, nearly choking me.

It felt like a chilly little child’s hand squeezing my throat.

I knelt on the floor, making muffled noises.

Shen Ji ignored me completely and began undressing.

My face flushed crimson as I went on making muffled noises.

With considerable interest, he pulled the cloth from my mouth.

“Your Highness!” I howled at the heavens. “Had you been born in the Spring and Autumn or Warring States period, your beauty would have united all standards of taste. The Hundred Schools would have had nothing left to debate! Had you been born in the Three Kingdoms era, Zhou Yu and Sun Ce would have wept in shame! Had you been born in—mmph!”

My mouth was stuffed shut again.

“Fawning sycophant,” Shen Ji said flatly.

I squinted, nodded frantically, and tried my hardest to spit out the cloth.

“Flowers look prettier with green leaves around them. Your Highness’s advisers look all the more upright and righteous with me beside them. Don’t you agree?”

Shen Ji laughed.

“Get over there and sleep.”

See? Even madmen like hearing nice things.

A few exquisite compliments from me, and even his sinister little face looked several years younger.

Since I was a treacherous courtier now, I had to help my prince steal the male lead’s luck.

At this point, the hero, Pei Lin, had only just entered court and was a tiny, insignificant official.

At the autumn hunt, he was going to play the hero and rescue the princess, win her heart, and ultimately make her willing to die for him.

On the day of the hunt, the north wind whipped through the air.

Shen Ji wore a fitted black outfit with narrow sleeves and lounged on a luohan couch.

Every maid and soldier was staring at me.

Because, with a treacherous courtier’s smile plastered across my face, I was shelling pine nuts for the Prince of Yan.

Once I had a handful, I rubbed them between my fingers and offered them to him.

“I’m not eating those.”

“Your Highness—”

“You secretly cracked them open with your front teeth. They’re covered in your spit. Do you take me for a fool?”

I was just about to burst into tears to demonstrate my heartfelt devotion to him when a piercing whistle sounded. Our novel’s male lead, Mr. Show-Off, reined in his horse with one hand and vaulted down.

On the viewing stand, the princess was already staring at Pei Lin, utterly spellbound. Alarm bells rang in my head.

I immediately got up, blocked her view, and called out in a long, extravagantly respectful drawl. “Your Hiiiighness! Hearing of you a hundred times cannot compare to seeing you once! Peacocks flee in shame at the sight of you, and peonies snap off their own buds, Princess!”

She blinked.

“Who are you?”

Shen Ji watched the spectacle with great interest, showing no desire whatsoever to come over.

“This servant is—” Suddenly, cries of alarm reached me. I picked up a silver tray in one hand and raised it lightly.

Clang!

An arrow struck the tray, punching more than a cun through it.

An eerie, poisonous gleam shone on its tip.

The princess stared at the arrow that had almost stabbed her, her face deathly pale.

Keeping my respectful smile, I nodded to her.

“Rong Qing, maidservant to the Prince of Yan.”

The male lead, who had been about to spur his horse forward and shoot the poisoned arrow off course, lowered his bow in a daze.

I turned and flashed him a V sign.

His eyes narrowed. For a moment, his easy, dashing expression disappeared.

“Rong… Qing. Thank you.”

When I turned back, the princess was gazing at me with shimmering eyes and pink cheeks.

I shivered.

In the original novel, the hero had asked a friend to stage this incident so he could get close to the princess and fulfill his dream of rising to the very top of officialdom.

In a novel about climbing the ranks, a real man apparently had to be ruthless.

Above me, everyone is equal. Below me, the hierarchy is strict.

Once the hero became an official, he looked down on his childhood sweetheart back home. But he also resented the princess for looking down on him, so he was determined to make her his possession.

After the princess died for him, he didn’t renounce romance or swear off love. He became tutor to a young prince instead.

And then… he fell for the empress!

From that moment, his dream of becoming the highest-ranking minister turned into rebellion. He called it the pursuit of love, but really, he couldn’t conceal his hunger for power. He was only draping his dream of becoming emperor in the false skin of a man sacrificing everything for love.

And from there, the plot took a decidedly bizarre turn.

“Rong Qing. Your name doesn’t quite suit you.” A cool voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Brother…” The princess stiffened and forced out a smile with great difficulty.

Shen Ji swept an indifferent glance over her, then stood before her, crouched down, and leaned close.

With deliberate malice, he brought his face level with the seated princess’s.

The smile trembled on her lips. Finally, sheer terror squeezed out a tear.

Shen Ji stood. “That’s more like it. Why pretend?”

The princess covered her face. “How can Rong Qing possibly serve someone as wicked as you?”

Just then, a clear, pleasant voice spoke.

“Greetings, Your Highnesses. I am Liu Bing, a female physician from the Jisheng Medical Institute. I’ve come to see whether the princess is unharmed.”

My heart jumped!

Liu Bing!

Wasn’t she the woman Shen Ji loved, and only loved, for his entire life in the original novel?