"Another matter?" Song Qingshu sensed there was a great deal of hidden truth behind this and was immediately intrigued.
Ruan Xingzhu nodded, gazing into the starry sky as though lost in memory. "Although I never thought much of Duan Zhengchun back then, I still had to continue the task Prime Minister Han had given me. So I kept pretending to be agreeable and compliant with him. Who would have thought that something later happened..."
"One day, my younger sister suddenly came to see me. I had important business and had to leave for a while, so I let her play by herself at Mirror Lake. Not long after I left, that bastard Duan Zhengchun came. Because my sister looked very much like me, he mistook her for me. And since she was playful by nature, she started pretending to be me as well. Though I was close to Duan Zhengchun in public, I knew where to draw the line and always kept enough distance from him. But my sister had been raised sheltered from the world since childhood. How could she resist the tricks of such an experienced rake? Before long, she had fallen for him, body and soul."
Song Qingshu's eyebrows twitched. The women of the Ruan family really did love playing cosplay games. But if you walked by the river often enough, your shoes were bound to get wet. Nearly every woman would stumble over such things—like A Zhu, like Ruan Xingzhu, and like her younger sister...
"By the time I found out, it was already too late. Her whole heart had already been given to Duan Zhengchun." Ruan Xingzhu let out a faint sigh. "I tried to persuade her, but she remained hopelessly infatuated. I had no choice but to make the best of a bad situation.