Don't miss this chapter, it's important!
If you've forgotten,
Shen Ruoyun: the retired grand Martial of Li Yang. (Shen Nuo's father)
Consort Lian: Shi Lianhua or Shi Jiu, a Noble Consort of Li Yan. A hidden martial artist and also the current head of Wolf Head Assassin Organization.
Shen Du: Grand Martial of Li Yang Empire and the Third Young Master of General's Manor.
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That evening, Shen Ruoyun stood forth the window of his enormous Study, patiently waiting for someone. His eyes were narrowed and it revealed an evil fire.
The door opened slowly behind him and a tall and a slender cloaked figure entered inside. The head was hooded heavily in black. But considering the shape of the figure, it was doubtlessly a young woman.
Ruoyun turned back and took a deep look at the woman. For a moment, she stood silently before she pushed the black hood to the back of her head.
A beautiful and an innocent looking face appeared. But half of that face had some slight scars of a burn. Shen Ruoyun sighed and raised his hand to the scarred cheek and gently stroked it.
Consort Lian trembled convulsively at the touch. But she did not dodge. She gulped. "Father..."
Ruoyun looked at her big glassy eyes. "Who did this to you?"
Consort Lian kept silent, biting her lower lip and her eyes turned moist. "Father! Forget it! Why did you call me again?"
Ruoyun continued to look at his illegitimate child. He did not think that one-day she would stand out to be the most beautiful daughter of his. Not only that, he did not think she would be the most useful as well. This secret of him being the father of this daughter was actually a secret that none knew.
But he regretted. Only if she wasn't the daughter of a whore with whom he had slept, only if she was born as one of his legitimate children at General's Manor, how lucky he would have been...
But for outside, she was still a nobody to him, she was just a brothel girl who was picked up by the Emperor into the harem out in mercy...
Ruoyun sighed again. "Do you hate your father?"
Consort Lian nodded her head with a weak and a weary smile. It was full of love towards her father whom she rarely had the chance to meet. "No, father, I love you."
Ruoyun nodded smiling. "You have always been the most obedient child I had." He said in a satisfied voice. "Then are you willing to do anything for the sake of your father?" He asked her in a soft whisper.
She gulped again. In her face was obviously unwillingness. "What is it this time? Father, no killing or no poisoning again. As long as it doesn't hurt anybody, I'm willing..."
Shen Ruoyun looked at her with a difficult emotion to understand. "You've changed a lot!"
The face that usually looked evil and heartless forth Shen Nuo now obviously had pain flashed across her face. "Father, I'm tired of killing. I don't want to kill anymore. If killing is what you want from me, I'm sorry dad, I can't. Perhaps father should ask help from someone else..."
Shen Ruoyun grasped from her shoulders gently but firmly. "Just this once. I promise you that I'll set you free after that."
Consort Lian felt uneasy. She moved away from his grasp, stepped several steps back and lowered her head politely. "Father! You tell so every time you ask me to kill but father's thirst to kill is never ending. I've failed you father, this time I can't!"
"Just for once!" Ruoyun said consolingly. "Only this time. Promise! Ok? You're my good girl!"
Consort Lian felt lame. Her face was pale. Her fingertips shuddered. She looked at her father with an inexplicable emotion. "Who?"
Ruoyun fixed his eyes at her. "I want Minghe's life."
Consort Lian was shocked. Blood left her already pale face. She went lame and couldn't speak for a long time. What was her father saying? To kill the Crown Prince of Li Yang? Did she hear wrongly? She couldn't believe.
"Father! I can't kill Minghe!" She said in incredulous disbelief. Minghe was yet five. He was harmless and cute, sensitive and caring, kind and supple by nature. He was sure to be a great Emperor by himself one-day. How can she make up her mind to kill him?
"You should!" Ruoyun said darkly. "You're doing this for your family!"
But Consort Lian shook her head furiously, her glassy eyes tearing in pain and shock. "Father! I also have a kid at his age! How can I kill that child just like that? Please!"
"Did I raise you all these years for nothing?" Shen Ruoyun asked, his voice suddenly drawing cold.
Shi Lianhua opened her mouth but did not know what to say. Her face was suddenly indifferent but she couldn't stop the tears that gathered at the chin if her lowered head. Ruoyun waited patiently. After a long time, Lianhua raised her red eyes to look at the heartless person who stood forth her.
"I don't know you anymore!" She sobbed sniffing. "You're not that father I met years and years ago. I did everything that dad asked me to do. Back then, I was small. But now when I remind them, do you know how I feel?"
Ruoyun pulled her into his cold snuggle. It wasn't comforting like she felt in her mother's warm snuggle. But mother was killed by the person who was snuggling her. She struggled out subconsciously. Ruoyun's eyes darkened. "Do you still take me as your father?"
Shi Lianhua smiled in unbearable pain. "Father is mistaken, perhaps you must be looking down on me. I'm just a chess piece of yours. You're just using me. Is that because I'm a child of a whore?"
"Shen Lianhua, dad had never looked down on you." Ruoyun said in a gloomy voice. "Or dad would not have taught you equally what dad had taught to Shendu and Shen Hao."
"Then what do you call this?" Lianhua asked at once. "All my brothers and sisters are free. They all lived their childhood respectfully as young masters and young misses of a manor. They were the sons and daughters of a general. But what of me? I was a bastard who was raised in a brothel! Why me? Why should I be forced like this to do things that I'm unwilling to do?"
She wiped away her tears furiously and spoke hoarsely again.
"Father, I don't wish for any of these. I still respect you as my father. Please give me back my son! I'll flee away from Li Yang! I can earn myself to keep my child alive!"
However, Shen Ruoyun who heard this felt his patience loosing control. His voice drew hard. "Did not father entrust you with his most secretive and important assassin agency? Hmmm? Wolf Head Assassin Organization now belongs to you. Aren't you now a Noble Consort of the Emperor? Aren't you already standing above all your brothers and sisters? Except Shendu, Shen Hao and Shen Nuo, even the eldest brother of yours have to bow his head to you when he sees you. Didn't dad give you what he promised?"
But Lianhua cried shaking her head furiously. "This is not what I want! Father! Why do you have to drag me into this against my will? I'm fed up of the crimes I've already committed. I can't do more!"
Ruoyun drew even gloomier. "You're the only choice I have, Lianhua. For some reason, gods gave you the exact appearance of the late Empress. You are my only way. You should help your dad!"
"Dad. Once I do everything and your dreams come true, Shen Nuo will become the Empress right? If it didn't work that way, you'll kill Li Yan and next Shendu will be the Emperor right? After all these come true, will I still be your daughter? Will they accept me a child of whore as their sibling?"
"Lianhua!" Ruoyun said in a hard voice.
"Dad!" Lianhua shouted, unable to take it any longer. "You told me that you treat me as your daughter. But I never knew it until I was fifteen that I had a father! Where were you back then? You just came to meet mom to vent on and saw me bastard that you had never seen for fifteen years and suddenly remembered you were a father right? If I did not look like the late Empress, would you still care to call me daughter?"
Ruoyun's eyes flashed. He slapped her across the face. Her face tilted to the side and a thin trail of blood felled down her cracked lowerlip. She suddenly laughed. That laughter was soft and gentle but it was wrenched with so much sorrow and pain. She raised her red eyes to look at her father.
"I don't mind! But father, it's ok if you don't want me. It's fine you don't love me. But you killed the only person that I loved and that loved me. You kidnapped our child just to make me your puppet. You forced me to work as a whore in a brothel to make my meeting with Li Yan a coincidence, right? You forced me to marry him against my will. Because of you, I'm already like this. Are you still not satisfied? What more do you want!!?"
"I only ask you one last thing. I want Minghe's life!"
But Lianhua's eyes looked resolute. "Ill do anything. But father, I can't kill Minghe!" She spoke in a firm voice.
"Then you'll have to pay with your son's life!" Ruoyun said mercilessly. "That son of yours hadn't seen you since the day you married the Emperor. He must be missing you a lot. He's just a kid of three. Does he worth this kind of a death? It's up to you to decide!"
"FATHER!!!" Consort Lian screamed in horror, tears bursting off her eyes. She felt as if she was stabbed. She couldn't believe that her father wanted to kill her son too. But then she realized it had always been the same.
It was she who blindly believed her father. Before she met the father of hers, she used to spend her wholesome days in a little house with her husband and son, farming in a little field by a cozy little house in a village. But -
Didn't her father kill her husband too? What can he not do?
She looked at Ruoyun with hate. "You're a monster!"
"Lianhua, think twice! I only asked you for Minghe's life. I'll do everything afterwards! If you do this, you'll be the sibling of the Empress and an aunt to the future Emperor! Your son will be a prince. You can get anything you like! Be it treasures or lands, anything shall be yours! You'll be rich!"
But Shi Lianhua smiled wearily, wiping the blood that felled down the corner of her lips with the back of her sleeve. Her eyes were very red. That smile was very painful. She gulped. "Father, I don't want any riches. I just miss the days I spent with my husband and child, happily farming in the fields... Can you bring back those days for me? No right? Because he is already dead!!!"
She didn't wait for him to reply anymore. She felt sick of her father. She did not want to hear him speak anymore. She still remembered the first day she saw her so called dad. Those were the days she married her sweet heart, a poor young and a handsome farmer who lived his poor life alone, righteously. She was moved by him.
When the young farmer saw a beautiful girl with a beauty to topple countries interested in a peasant like him, he was shocked. Sooner he found out she was a kind young maiden who was yet single. After few unexpected encounters, they deeply understood each other and married. They had a son by the next year.
Lianhua always loved her husband. She never neglected her duties as a wife or a mother. At that time, the poor young farmer thought it was really bad for her to be prisoned here. She deserved to be a queen with her beauty and kindness. And yet she chose her life to spend with him. How can he not be moved? He loved her more than anything. But good days didn't last long. Once his wife said she would be visiting her old mother with her little son.
He did not know this would cause the change of their life. Young Lianhua who met her maid mother at the brothel, came across a tall middle aged man who was with her mother...
That was the first day she saw her father... At first, she was very happy to know her father was the general of the state. She thought finally their hardships would come to an end.
But now when she turned back to remind those memories, she felt frustrated. She regretted it. She didn't want to remind them anymore. Not for her father, would she be like this now?
Yes, once she used to be very kind. She used to be a good wife. She used to be a good mother. She used to help those who needed it. She used to be a good woman.
But it was her father who turned her into a monster. He killed her husband and took her son away. He confiscated her little fields along with the whole village to built a military camp...
He killed her helpless mother at the brothel and forced Lianhua to marry the Emperor. He forced her to kill the kind Empress Xi Jinluo. That was one of the worst crimes that she regretted in her whole life. Xi Jiu was pregnant with Minghe at that time.
Luckily Lianhua was able to save Minghe's life by secretly asking a doctor to give the only antidote to that poison she fed to Xi Jiu for months. Minghe's life was finally saved.
The day Xi Jiu was burried at the Ancestral Mountain, she cried secretly and swore to heavens that she would keep that child safe even it would be at the risk of her own death. And now she was asked to kill that child again. Could she?
Lianhua silently exited the Study of General's Manor and came out. She did not know what to do. She felt lost. She was tired of pretending to be the villain all these years. She needed rest. Cold tears left her eyes.
This time when her son's life was threatened like this, she felt disgusted of her father. She missed that child of hers who was yet three years and few months old. The child was not even three months old when he was snatched away from her by that heartless person.
She raised her tear stained face to look at the gloomy sky that flashed with soundless lightnings.
Cold drops of a gentle drizzle slapped on her face, mingled with her tears and dropped down her chin. She shut her eyes painfully and bitterly. Her throat pained too. Her heart pained more. "Why don't I die..."
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✌️ From seniority she's the fifth child of Shen Ruoyun and the Fifth Miss of General's Manor, junior to Shen Yue, Shen Ming, Shen Du, Shen Hao and senior to the twins Shen Jiu and Shen Jue and finally, Shen Nuo.
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