Broken Jade - Chapter 120

Chapter 120

Sheng Zhaoning gave Zhou Wei a name.

Years ago, for Wei Yi’s sake, she had defied Prince Zhenbei’s orders and secretly let a mother and child escape. Never had she imagined that one day, they might become her lifeline.

Zhou Wei wasted no time. He set out early the next morning.

Before the sky had begun to lighten, a swift horse galloped from Sheng Mansion toward the city gates.

No one noticed the Xuanniao lurking in the shadows, a secret message clasped in its beak, as it flew toward the upper floors of Mingyue Pavilion.

It circled past Sheng Mansion, cut across streets and alleys, and soared over Mingxi Street, its feathers damp with the spring morning dew.

The Xuanniao landed steadily on the corner of a window.

A hand reached out and took the secret message from its beak.

Han Xu unfolded the paper. It held only two short lines and a handful of words.

-Zhou Wei left the city on horseback at a quarter past five.

His brow tightened.

Sheng Zhaoning was making her move after all.

“Your Highness, our spy at Sheng Mansion has sent word.”

Han Xu turned and walked to the table, presenting the secret message to Wei Yi.

Dawn had only just begun to break, the edge of the sky tinged a pale bluish gray.

Night pearls embedded around the walls cast a dim, cold glow. A candle burned on the table, having remained lit all night.

The man seated there held a piece of wood in one hand. At Han Xu’s words, the knife in his other hand paused slightly.

He clutched the wood in his palm. Shavings littered the floor beneath him, while the object itself remained a pitted, misshapen lump with no discernible form.

Wei Yi took the message and gave it a cursory glance. Then, expressionless, he resumed carving the wood.

“Where is he going?”

In the surrounding silence, the scrape of the blade against the wood sounded especially clear.

Han Xu lowered his head. “We don’t know yet.”

Wei Yi had stationed spies all around Sheng Mansion, both to watch Sheng Zhaoning and to protect her.

Prince Zhenbei had already learned of Sheng Zhaoning’s betrayal, yet for some reason, he still had not acted. Even so, Wei Yi had sent his own men there to prevent anyone from the Zhenbei Prince’s Mansion from assassinating her.

“Shall I send someone to investigate, Your Highness?” Han Xu asked.

Sheng Zhaoning had sent someone out of the city at a time like this. Her intentions could hardly be innocent. In all likelihood, she was preparing to strike at the Zhenbei Prince’s Mansion.

There was no way Wei Yi had failed to consider that.

When she hardened her heart, she showed mercy to no one.

Wei Yi let out a cold laugh. “Investigate.”

He tossed the knife aside and ran his fingers over the block of wood in his hand. “What do you think she’ll use against me?”

She could no longer even lift a blade. All she could do was borrow someone else’s hand to act on her behalf.

Sheng Zhaoning had always been loyal only to the Wei Clan. She possessed no forces of her own. He could not imagine what kind of scheme she could possibly devise.

Han Xu lowered his head and pondered for a long moment, but he too could think of no one she might still be able to call upon.

He was just about to answer when something suddenly flashed through his mind.

Every hair on his body stood on end.

“Your Highness…”

Han Xu looked up in shock, his face instantly draining of color.

Wei Yi raised his eyes. His dark, inscrutable gaze settled on Han Xu, only to find him wearing a rare expression of panic. Han Xu abruptly swept back his robes and dropped to his knees.

He clasped his hands before him and said, “I deserve death. There is something I have never reported to Your Highness!”

A searching look entered Wei Yi’s eyes, and an ominous tremor passed through his heart.

“What is it?”

Cold sweat had already begun to bead on Han Xu’s forehead. “Back then, Prince Zhenbei ordered Sheng Zhaoning to hunt down Chen Shao and his family. Your Highness went to her and told her not to harm Chen Shao’s wife and children.”

By this point, Han Xu’s voice was trembling with tension.

Wei Yi seemed to recall that long-buried incident at last. His hands clenched tightly, his fingertips turning white from the force.

“Go on.” His eyes were black as ink, and he nearly ground the words out through clenched teeth.

Han Xu knocked his forehead heavily against the floor and closed his eyes.

“Sheng Zhaoning… didn’t do it!”

Back then, for Wei Yi’s sake, Sheng Zhaoning had disregarded Prince Zhenbei’s kill order. She had slashed the faces of two fake corpses beyond recognition and used them to deceive everyone, secretly helping the mother and son escape.

Afterward, to convince everyone that Chen Shao’s entire household had been wiped out, she had guarded the truth with her life. She had not even told Wei Yi.

If Han Xu had not personally traveled to Yanzhou, even he might still have been kept in the dark.

Han Xu still remembered how Sheng Zhaoning had endured the full force of Wei Yi’s towering rage to convince the prince that Chen Shao’s wife and son were dead. Already gravely injured, she had then suffered another two hundred lashes and nearly died in the Punishment Hall.

Wei Yi had never known any of this.

An eerie silence settled over the room.

The first pale light of dawn appeared in the distance. With his back to the window, Wei Yi’s gaze turned colder by the second.

“You’ve got some nerve.”

His voice could almost have been called calm.

Yet Han Xu heard a bone-deep chill in it unlike anything he had ever heard before.

“This subordinate knows he was wrong. Please punish me, Your Highness!” Han Xu bowed his head deeply.

Wei Yi closed his eyes. His face trembled slightly from the force of his restraint, the veins at his temples bulging as a violent aura surged around him.

He had not forgotten how badly Sheng Zhaoning had been injured that time. She had been bedridden for a full month before she could stand again, and her entire left arm had nearly been crippled.

Yet he had been so consumed by what he believed was Sheng Zhaoning’s betrayal of her promise that he had neither asked nor cared about her injuries. When he saw her again at a birthday banquet soon afterward, his lingering anger had even driven him to make her kneel in the snow for an entire night.

A sharp pain suddenly stabbed through Wei Yi’s heart. Countless memories overlapped, surging over him like a tide and swallowing him whole.

He suddenly wondered if he had truly treated her terribly all these years.

He had hurt her without restraint, all while firmly believing she would never leave him.

Wei Yi’s breathing gradually grew ragged. The suffocating pressure in his chest left him barely able to breathe.

When he had first met Sheng Zhaoning, he had actually liked her very much.

How had things ended up like this?

“Where did Sheng Zhaoning hide them?” he asked.

Han Xu did not raise his head. “This subordinate does not know.”

Back then, he had simply gone along with her deception and sent a false report back to the Zhenbei Prince’s Mansion, thereby saving the mother and son on Wei Yi’s behalf. But he did not know where Sheng Zhaoning had sent them.

He did, however, remember the direction in which they had once intended to flee.

“They may be in Yanzhou.”

Wei Yi opened his eyes, concealing every trace of emotion within them as his gaze shot straight toward Han Xu.

“Send men to search Yanzhou at once.”

“Also, keep a close watch on Zhou Wei. The moment we receive any news about the mother and son, have them apprehended and escorted under guard back to Liangzhou immediately.”

“Yes!”

The sound of footsteps gradually faded away.

After Han Xu left, silence returned to the room.

Day had fully broken. Dawn pierced the clouds, and the eastern sky had turned white.

Morning light streamed through the window and fell across Wei Yi’s back, enveloping him in a deep golden glow.

With no one else present, Wei Yi finally stopped suppressing the shock and fear in his heart. Bracing himself against the table, he began to gasp violently for breath.

She had not broken her promise.

Sweat slid down from his brow and dripped into his eyes. His vision blurred as the moisture spread.

If… if only he had trusted Sheng Zhaoning a little more back then.

If he had not treated her so cruelly, had not handed her over to Ao Chun, had not agreed to let her come to Capital City.

If he had not said those things on the pleasure boat.

Would Sheng Zhaoning still have fallen in love with someone else?

Luochuan. The pleasure boat…

“Wei Yi, I went looking for you.”

He suddenly remembered those words, and a crushing panic belatedly flooded his heart.

What had she wanted to tell him the day she went to the pleasure boat?

Wei Yi did not know.

Perhaps he would never know for the rest of his life.