A noise came from nearby. Shang Xin Lei turned her head and saw Yan Qing sit down beside her. Before she could speak, Yan Qing asked first, "And then?"
"What do you mean, 'and then'?" Shang Xin Lei was both amused and exasperated. Do you think I'm a storyteller?
"Will the imperial family confiscate your family's property and exterminate your clan because of what happened tonight?"
"How could that happen? The Shang Family is one of the Seven Great Noble Classes. At most, they'll hasten Father's retirement."
"If that's the case, how do you plan to make up for your mistake?"
Shang Xin Lei was slightly stunned. After a moment of silence, she said, "From now on, I'll follow Father's arrangements and stop acting on my own."
Yan Qing propped up his chin. "What else? Isn't that what you should have been doing? That doesn't count as compensation. It's just a child acting spoiled after getting into trouble."
"Don't make it sound so easy!" Shang Xin Lei could not help shouting back. "Can I make up for the current situation by myself? If there were something I could do, I would have done it already!"
"Did you really give it your all? Use all your intelligence? Try every method you could think of?" Yan Qing's tone was calm, but there was something unmistakably sarcastic about it. "Was assassinating the emperor your only answer? Was that easier than confronting your father directly?"
"It's not that simple—"
"You're the ones who made things too complicated." Yan Qing interrupted her. "You understand your father even less than Rat Monk does, yet you can clearly tell from his arrangements that he cares about you. So why don't you dare talk to him about what you really think? Have you ever actually told him that