Just a Wet Nurse, Just a Plaything? Everyone Wept After My Death - Chapter 75
Chapter 75
The gates of the General’s Manor swung open with a thunderous crash.
Outside stood a carriage draped in blue curtains and emblazoned with the imperial crest. Bronze bells hung from each of its four corners, their hoarse chimes carried by the bitter wind like soul-summoning bells from another world.
Eunuch Li stood beside the carriage, flicking the horsetail whisk in his hand with an impatient look on his face.
“Hurry up, Lady Shen! If we miss the auspicious hour and His Highness the Ninth Prince goes hungry, how many heads do you think you have to lose?”
The frigid wind whipped snow into her face.
Shen Yingyue stepped over the threshold of Tingfeng Courtyard.
She wore a plain cloak that was neither new nor particularly old, something the steward had hastily found for her. It was so thin that it offered no protection against Yanzhou’s brutal cold. In her hand, she carried only a small bundle containing one or two changes of clothes and the charred scrap of Nuannuan’s bellyband.
After spending months in the General’s Manor, this was all she was taking with her.
“Yingyue…”
A voice heavy with restrained anguish came from behind her.
Huo Xiao stood below the steps. He was still wearing the same casual robes steeped in the stench of alcohol, with no heavy cloak over them. Snow had gathered across his shoulders.
He stared at her slender back, his eyes bloodshot and his hands clenched so tightly that his nails dug deep into his palms. He seemed to want to step forward and stop her, to make another promise like, “I’ll bring you back.”
But his feet might as well have taken root. He could not move a single step.
Old Madam Huo’s spies were watching from the direction of Songhe Hall.
Beyond the manor gates, Eunuch Li, a representative of imperial authority, was eyeing him closely.
He did not dare.
Shen Yingyue’s steps faltered for the briefest moment.
She turned her head and swept an indifferent glance over Huo Xiao.
There was no hatred in that look. No lingering attachment. Not even the slightest trace of anger.
There was only an intense, visceral disgust.
It was the look one might give a piece of moldy, rotting meat, or a puddle of filth.
Once, she had believed this man was her heaven and earth, the one towering tree she could depend on in this chaotic world.
But now, what sort of towering tree was he?
He was nothing but a hollow, rotting log!
He commanded enough military power to shake all of Yanzhou and possessed the strength to kill without hesitation, yet before the demands of “filial duty” and social convention, he lived like a mangy dog whose spine had been ripped out.
His so-called “devotion” was nothing more than a pathetic delusion meant to move himself. His so-called “helplessness” was merely cowardice after weighing the costs and benefits.
Looking at him for even a moment longer made Shen Yingyue feel as if the eyes she had just washed clean with tears would be soiled all over again.
She withdrew her gaze. She did not bow to him or utter a single word.
Turning away, she straightened her whip-scarred back, holding herself taller than ever before, and walked step by step through the wind and snow toward the carriage that would carry her into the unknown.
“Shen Yingyue…”
As Huo Xiao watched her leave without a backward glance, agony tore through his chest. He instinctively reached out, desperate to catch even the corner of her cloak.
But all he grasped was empty air and the freezing snow-laden wind.
“Depart!”
Eunuch Li’s shrill voice rang out.
Shen Yingyue stepped onto the footstool and climbed into the carriage.
The instant the heavy blue curtain fell, it shut the grand and imposing General’s Manor from her sight once and for all, that place that devoured people whole and left not even their bones behind.
The wheels rolled forward, grinding over the snow with a muffled rumble.
Inside the carriage, the light was dim, and the air carried the stale scent of old incense.
Shen Yingyue leaned against the icy carriage wall. Every jolt sent a dull throb through the wounds on her back, but she seemed unable to feel it.
She slowly closed her eyes and pressed both hands tightly over the scrap of Nuannuan’s bellyband at her chest.
At last, hidden in this solitary corner, two clear trails of tears slipped silently down her cheeks.
But these tears were no longer for Huo Xiao, nor were they for the “Shen Yingyue” who had died.
They were for the avenger who was about to be reborn.
“Watch me, Nuannuan.”
In her heart, she spoke to the scrap of cloth and to the unseen fate hanging in the void, swearing each word with deliberate force.
“I am going to the capital, to the palace beyond nine towering gates. It is a den of dragons and tigers, but it is also the pinnacle of power beneath the heavens.”
“If this world belongs to those who prey upon the weak, if kindness and compromise earn nothing but trampling and humiliation…”
“Then I will cast aside my humanity.”
Shen Yingyue’s eyes snapped open.
In the dim carriage, the eyes that had once been as gentle as water now burned with two cold, ghostly flames. Within them smoldered a ruthless ambition chilling enough to strike fear into anyone’s heart.
“I will become the wicked consort who brings ruin to the realm. I will become the villain who holds the power of life and death!”
“Step by step, one step at a time, I will climb!”
“Even if I must cross mountains of blades and seas of fire, even if my hands become drenched in blood, I will climb to the highest place of all!”
“I will climb until no one in this world dares look down on me again, until no one dares lay a finger on my daughter!”
“Huo Xiao. Liu Ruyan. Old Madam Huo…”
“Wait for me in Yanzhou.”
“The day I emerge from the depths of that palace will be the day the Huo Family meets its…”
“Doom!”
The carriage traveled farther and farther away until it finally vanished beyond the vast, snow-covered horizon.
Shen Yingyue, the weak and defenseless wet nurse, died amid the wind and snow of Yanzhou.
