He walked along the road, weaving between ancient trees with luxuriant, outstretched branches.
The road was shaded, with only mottled, fragmented golden sunlight spilling through.
Yet Jiang Ning felt somewhat weighed down.
The hardest thing to bear was a beauty's favor.
He had originally come to the Royal Capital with one more thing to do: make things clear with Ji Mingyue.
He believed that he and Ji Mingyue had only met once, and that there was a vast gulf between their statuses.
One was the incomparably noble Imperial Seventeenth Princess, while he had once been merely a lowly ordinary official. Their social classes, lifestyles, customs, and outlooks were all different.
He did not believe Ji Mingyue could truly fall for him.
In his eyes, it was merely the accidental stirring of a girl's heart. It had come quickly and would leave just as quickly.
They had met only once, nearly a year ago. Even their faces had grown hazy in his memory—what feelings could possibly remain?
Therefore, even after arriving in the Royal Capital, he had not been in a hurry to handle this matter.
After all, meeting Ji Mingyue was still very troublesome for him.
He currently had no qualifications to enter or leave the Imperial Palace, much less to meet Ji Mingyue.
With no way to get in and out of the Imperial Palace, he had simply set the matter aside for the time being and focused on improving himself.
But only after hearing those people's conversations and discussions had he learned that—
Before he had even arrived, Ji Mingyue had shouldered the matter alone. She had insisted on marrying him, and the affair had already become known among every powerful family in the city.
That kind of resolve, that decisiveness, was what gave him the greatest headache.