Her mother had died, she had been abandoned by her father, and she was still able to smile despite being beaten by her stepmother—she truly wasn’t normal.
"Lu Xueying." She answered succinctly.
Gu Youyou nodded and said, "It’s a rather delicate name, but it doesn’t suit you at all. In any case, you are considered dead within the Lu Residence, so you can’t use this name anymore. I’ll give you a new one."
"Whatever!" She genuinely seemed indifferent, as if a name meant nothing to her.
Simply by observing her, one could tell how extreme her late mother must have been; otherwise, she couldn’t have raised a child .
"Alright, from today on, you will no longer be called Lu Xueying, but instead... Searcy." She indulged in a bit of wicked humor—for in Greek mythology, Searcy was a fearsome and malicious witch skilled in poisoning, and she felt this name was quite fitting for a troubled girl like Lu Xueying.
Lu Xueying raised an eyebrow at Gu Youyou, finding the new name she was given to sound very odd, but she didn’t dwell on it for long, quickly casting it to the back of her mind.
"Let’s see how your injuries are."
Gu Youyou opened her clothes to examine the wounds on her body.
The injuries on her legs were more severe; the rest of her body was just battered by the whip. Being young and in good health, she was recovering nicely.
Healing the wounds on her legs would be more troublesome—there was a slight fracture, which had already started to deform because the optimal time for treatment had been delayed.
She had already treated her after taking her from Madam Lu the day before.
Gu Youyou re-broke the deformed leg bone, then took a wooden splint and bound it up. She didn’t administer any anesthetic throughout the process, and the girl really was tough, enduring it without making a peep.
Gu Youyou looked at her leg again and chuckled lightly, "You’re really tough. If you were a boy and used your tenacity on the battlefield, perhaps your father wouldn’t have wanted to kill you."
Searcy sneered, "But I applied all my skills to poisoning."
Gu Youyou was left at a loss for words.
After applying the medicine to her wounds, it took a long while before she could speak again.
"So how were you and your mother discovered poisoning Madam Lu?"
With a profound indifference, Searcy spoke softly, "That day, my mother poisoned my elder brother, but my father ended up consuming it. My father was advanced in years and couldn’t withstand the toxicity of the drug. Although my mother did her best to save him, he was severely injured and nearly died. My grandmother called for an Imperial Physician. With one look, he recognized that my father had been poisoned and ordered a search for the dregs of the poison, otherwise, my father would have been beyond saving.
After years of marriage, my mother couldn’t bear to let my father die, so she proactively disclosed the ingredients, method of preparation, and effects of the poison to the Imperial Physician. He saved my father, and because of that, everyone learned that the poison was administered by my mother’s own hand. As the truth came to light, the maids close to my mother couldn’t escape. To save their own lives, my mother’s closest maid betrayed her, revealing everything she had done in the residence over the years—poisoning the concubines, poisoning my father to gain favor for the Madam, as well as what she did to Madam Lu back at Mo Family..."
Having listened to the story, Gu Youyou found it somewhat bittersweet.
"Your mother, in the end, did hold some affection for General Lu, didn’t she? She didn’t betray Madam Lu? The things she did, she probably did mostly under Madam Lu’s orders, right?"