Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Early the next morning, Huo Yanzhi ordered his men to take me to the ancestral hall.

Officials from the Imperial Clan Court had already arrived.

The hall was lined with the Huo Family elders. Luo Yingxue’s eyes were red from crying as she laid out the evidence piece by piece: the half jade lock, the birth record, and the silver bell left by the midwife from years ago. It was as if she were setting the stage for a trial that would nail me to my coffin.

“Madam Gu suffered a postpartum hemorrhage and passed away shortly after giving birth,” Luo Yingxue said, dabbing her tears with a handkerchief. “On her deathbed, she kept one child in the mansion and sent the other to the manor, all because twins are an ill omen. But who could have known that Yue’er, the one at the manor, was the true legitimate daughter? The one in the mansion was the one switched by mistake back then.”

The presiding official from the Imperial Clan Court looked at me. “Huo Lingning, do you have anything to say?”

I slowly raised my eyes. “I do.”

I placed the thin sheet of paper left by my mother onto the table.

The ancestral hall fell silent instantly.

Huo Yanzhi’s gaze sharpened, and Luo Yingxue’s hand trembled almost imperceptibly.

But it wasn’t enough.

They had clearly anticipated that I might produce some scrap of evidence. The presiding official took only a single glance before frowning. “An old piece of paper. It’s hard to distinguish its authenticity.”

Luo Yingxue immediately followed up, “Who knows if she forged it last night!”

Just then, Shen Xingjian walked in with Nanny Zhou.

Nanny Zhou knelt and presented the birthing records left by Lady Gu, the manor’s medicine logs, and Huo Shuyue’s personal diary.

As the presiding official flipped through the pages, his expression gradually darkened.

Huo Yanzhi finally couldn’t sit still any longer and shouted sternly, “How can the words of an old servant be taken as testimony?”

“Then what about the body?” I stared at him. “Father, why don’t you explain why there are signs of poisoning and binding on Huo Shuyue? If she really was the legitimate daughter who died of illness at the manor, why was her clothing changed, her cause of death falsified, and why was she carried back to the Huo Mansion in the middle of the night?”

Huo Yanzhi’s face was grim; he did not answer.

Luo Yingxue suddenly threw herself to the ground, grabbing the hem of my skirt and weeping. “Lingning, I beg of you. If you want to be the legitimate daughter, then be it. If you want the dowry, take it. Why must you drag the dead out to torment them? Yue’er has suffered enough!”

She was an expert at this routine.

Crying until she looked like the victim, forcing others into the role of the aggressive villain.

The room full of elders indeed looked moved.

Just as I was about to speak, Shen Xingjian took a paper packet from his sleeve and placed it before the presiding official.

“This is a gold needle retrieved from Huo Shuyue’s hair. The character ‘Ying’ is engraved on its base,” he said. “There is another thing I ordered my men to dig up from the well at the West Manor yesterday.”

An attendant opened a small wooden box, revealing a medicine bottle ruined by mud and water.

A trace of greenish-black powder remained at the bottom.

“The medicine is called ‘Dream-Severing’,” Shen Xingjian said, looking at the crowd. “In small doses, it causes lethargy; in larger amounts, it is lethal. There are few shops in the capital that sell this medicine, but three months ago, Luo Yingxue’s personal servant bought two whole bottles from Tongren Hall in the south of the city.”

Luo Yingxue’s face turned pale instantly. She shrieked, “You’re slandering me!”

“Slander?” Shen Xingjian smiled faintly. “Then look at this.”

He handed over another ledger.

It bore the official seal of the Huo Family’s inner chambers.

Luo Yingxue was completely speechless.

Amidst the uproar in the hall, Huo Yanzhi suddenly slammed the table and stood up. “Enough! Even if Yingxue used medicine, so what? A mere girl raised at a manor died-is that really worth dragging the Imperial Clan Court into this?”

As soon as those words left his mouth, the ancestral hall became so quiet that a pin drop could be heard.

Even the presiding official’s expression changed.

Because that one sentence was equivalent to his own admission that Huo Shuyue had not died of illness, but had been discarded as a “mere girl,” as if she were nothing.

I looked at him, and the last shred of delusion I had about a “father” shattered completely.

“She wasn’t just a girl,” I said, syllable by syllable. “She was your biological daughter.”

Huo Yanzhi met my gaze. His expression held no remorse, only a coldness born from being cornered.

“So what if she was biological?” He sneered. “Twins are an ill omen to begin with. Keeping one was already an act of mercy. If it weren’t for the Gu Family dowry and that face of yours, she should have died in her swaddling clothes long ago.”

A roar echoed in my head, and I could barely hear anything else.

The truth was far more disgusting than I had imagined.

It wasn’t a mistake at birth.

It wasn’t a moment of soft-heartedness.

From the very beginning, he had only ever intended to keep the one daughter who could bring him profit.