The blankness on Jiang Yingcheng's face as she looked over made Jiang Yanchuan's heart ache a little.
Perhaps not a little. It ached very, very much.
The little girl had carried such a secret, knowing it would be discovered sooner or later, yet she had always been so careful, doing everything she could to help him. Thinking about it now, perhaps he... had not been a very good Imperial Father either.
He had always wanted to wait until everything was firmly within his control before revealing the truth, forgetting that she would remain uneasy all that time.
Jiang Yanchuan slowly crouched down and reached out to turn the little girl toward him. Then he brushed a finger beneath her eyes, where tears threatened to fall, and teased her in an attempt to soothe her. "Going to cry again?"
Unfortunately, his experience in comforting children was pitifully scant. It would have been better if he had said nothing, because the moment he spoke-
Jiang Yingcheng shook her head blankly. Then her tears burst forth like a river breaching its banks. "Waaahhh-"
She quickly drew up an equation in her mind-
Imperial Father knew who she was = she could no longer be a princess = her Imperial Father would no longer love her the way he loved his own children!
The sudden turn of events left her no room to consider why her beautiful Imperial Father had known about this for so long without exposing her. She could only sob at the top of her lungs.
Unlike her earlier theatrical sniffling, this time the little girl did not even call upon "System Bro" for help in her mind. She was utterly absorbed in bawling.
Jiang Yanchuan: "..."
What... had he said wrong this time?!
For the first time in his life,