The brief conversation Zeng Qinghuan shared with Mother Mo that night was only a rare glimpse of warmth amid the countless clashes of blades and storms of blood to come.
Court struggles were darker and more treacherous than the battlefield. Sometimes, bringing down an opponent inevitably meant doing things that went against one's conscience. Zeng Qinghuan had seen brutal battlefields and corpses strewn across the land, but those soldiers had died honorably for their country, their deaths glorious. Court was not like that.
Occasionally, very occasionally, Zeng Qinghuan began to feel that perhaps Mo Zhou's early passing was not entirely a bad thing. There were things Mo Zhou would never have done, but Zeng Qinghuan was different.
Their experiences had made them different.
By the day the dust finally settled, Zeng Qinghuan had long since become a thorn in the sides of the Empress Dowager and the Regent Prince. But she truly had not expected them to hate her enough to want her dead at any cost, even sending their most capable covert guards to kill her in the final moments of the struggle.
Every one of those covert guards possessed top-class martial skills. On the battlefield, each could have fought a hundred enemies alone, but in the Imperial Capital, they were merely tools for the Empress Dowager and the Regent Prince to consolidate their power, amass wealth, and eliminate dissenters.
The people's suffering meant nothing to them.
There was always rich, fatty food on their tables.
Zeng Qinghuan fought with all her strength and killed four of them. When only the last remained, the guard pinned down the exhausted Zeng Qinghuan and forced poisoned wine down her throat-the Regent Prince and the Empress Dowager both wanted her to die in the most agonizing way possible.
The wine shimmered and