The Princess Consort Wants to Kill Herself

The princess consort wanted to kill herself?

A powerful force dragged Chen Fan along, making him stumble as he ran.

"Hurry up! What are you standing there for?"

The guard beside him was frantic, dragging him through the winding corridors without giving him a moment to adjust to this new body.

Lin Shou.

A personal guard of the princely residence, a Ninth Grade martial artist.

That was his new identity.

Chen Fan felt the meager trace of inner force in his body, along with the lingering ache of death from his previous body, faintly emanating from his chest. He was at a loss for words.

He had gone from a prisoner with a chance to possess a Seventh Rank commandant to a cannon-fodder Ninth Grade guard.

He had lost his shirt on this deal.

Beyond the moon gate, an elegant pavilion lay in chaos.

The maids' screams and cries could be heard from far away.

"Out of the way! All of you, out of the way!"

The guard pulling Chen Fan bellowed and shoved several maids aside, and the two men charged into the courtyard.

The courtyard was a mess.

A length of torn white silk fluttered in the wind from the white jade railing.

A porcelain vase lay shattered on the ground.

Several older matrons were struggling to hold a woman, one of them pressing the point beneath her nose.

The woman lay limp in their arms. She was none other than Li Rong'er, the Princess Consort of Xiushan.

Her eyes were shut tight, and her once-beautiful face was now as white as paper, utterly lifeless.

Before them stood a middle-aged man in a robe embroidered with a four-clawed flood dragon.

Zheng Xian, the Prince of Xiushan.

He showed not the slightest concern. His well-maintained face held only fury and undisguised disgust.

It was as though the person lying on the ground was not his wife, but a piece of trash that had brought him shame.

"Cough, cough..."

Under the matron's emergency treatment, Li Rong'er suddenly began coughing and slowly regained consciousness.

She opened her eyes to see a courtyard full of panicked servants and her husband's face, filled with revulsion.

The faint color that had just returned to her face vanished, leaving her deathly pale again.

"You still want to die?"

Zheng Xian spoke, every word like a shard of ice squeezed through his teeth.

"Do you think dying will put an end to everything? Do you think your death will restore the face of this prince and the entire residence?"

"After that bandit defiled you on the mountain and ruined your chastity, you had the face to come back but not to go on living? Now you want to die in this residence too? Are you trying to make this prince the laughingstock of the entire dynasty?!"

The vicious words struck Li Rong'er's heart, one after another.

Her body trembled, and tears poured down like a breached dam, but she could not make a sound.

Despair, utter despair.

She wanted to die, but she did not even have the right to do that.

Zheng Xian's fury still burned. He kicked over a nearby flower stand with a tremendous crash.

"Until this prince gets to the bottom of the stolen secret manual, you'd better keep yourself alive!"

His scarlet eyes swept over everyone before settling on the newly arrived Chen Fan and the other guard.

He pointed at them.

"You two, keep an eye on her for this prince!"

"If she dares try to kill herself again, or even loses a single hair, this prince will take your heads!"

With that, Zheng Xian swept his sleeves aside, turned, and left without looking back.

He felt that even another glance at this woman would dirty his eyes.

Only after the prince left did the oppressive atmosphere in the courtyard ease slightly.

The maids hurriedly helped the distraught princess consort into the pavilion.

The doors closed.

Only Chen Fan and the other guard, a man named Zhang Cheng, remained in the courtyard, planted at the entrance like a pair of door gods.

Chen Fan looked at the tightly shut doors, his mind a muddle.

Something was wrong.

A little wrong.

If Zheng Xian truly cared about the princess consort, then making such a grand show of sending troops to wipe out the bandits made perfect sense.

But what was with the way he had just looked as though he wanted to carve the princess consort into a thousand pieces?

He had made no attempt to hide his disgust.

His attitudes before and after were as different as two people.

"Alas."

Beside him, Zhang Cheng suddenly let out a long sigh.

Chen Fan glanced at him and, adopting the tone of an ordinary guard, asked in a low voice:

"Brother Zhang, why does the prince... treat the princess consort like that?"

Zhang San looked around and, after making sure no one else was nearby, leaned close to Chen Fan's ear and lowered his voice.

"Lin Shou, you haven't been here long, so you don't understand how things work."

He pointed at the pavilion, then in the direction the prince had gone.

"The prince never cared about the princess consort herself."

Chen Fan said nothing and listened quietly.

"Our prince has few descendants. After all these years, he has only one son."

A complicated expression appeared on Zhang San's face.

"And that young prince was born to Her Highness the princess consort."

So that was it...

In that instant, all his doubts unraveled.

Zheng Xian had not sent troops to surround and wipe out Black Wind Mountain to rescue his beloved wife.

He had done it to protect the mother of his only heir!

A princess consort losing her chastity was a small matter.

But the mother of a future prince being defiled by mountain bandits was a monumental disgrace, enough to shake the foundations of the entire princely residence!

He was furious not because he had been made to wear a green hat.

It was because his only son, his future heir, now had a mother whose chastity was tainted!

That was the root of his fury!

Li Rong'er had never been his beloved, from beginning to end.

Perhaps she once had been.

But now she was only a tool for bearing children, a vessel for carrying on his bloodline.

Once this vessel was contaminated, she had gone from a meritorious contributor to an enormous stain.

Chen Fan stood where he was, feeling that even the air in the princely residence had grown much colder.

This was the logic of royalty.

Cold, cruel, without a trace of human warmth.

"So, you understand now, right?"

Zhang Cheng patted him on the shoulder and lowered his voice.

"What we're watching over now isn't the princess consort. It's the residence's face, and the young prince's future."

Chen Fan turned his head and looked at the tightly shut doors.

Inside was a woman whose heart had completely died.

Outside were two tools tasked with guarding this scandal.

"Stand up straight!"

Zhang San suddenly barked in a low voice and nudged him with his elbow.

"Look sharp. This job could cost us our heads."

Chen Fan nodded to show he understood.

He could not help feeling a little rueful. Going from a mountain king to a household slave really was a tremendous fall.

At least he was a household slave in a princely residence; the treatment was presumably not bad.

Having absorbed Lin Shou's memories, he learned from them that the residence did indeed treat its people well. Martial artists like him, in particular, received generous treatment.

They had their own quarters and were also given some of the resources needed to cultivate the Martial Dao every month.

This was important, and it was also why many martial artists sought shelter with aristocratic clans and nobles, becoming household slaves.

High-grade martial artists were an exception, of course, because the imperial court had issued a ban strictly forbidding great aristocratic clans, including princely and noble residences, from keeping high-grade martial artists in their service.

Even in the grand Prince of Xiushan's Residence, the strongest was merely its old chief steward, a Fifth Grade martial artist.

The old chief steward, however, was responsible only for the prince's safety and rarely left his side.