A sound of a chess piece falling, shattered white jade, resembled someone’s broken heart!
On the night Xin Qiner of the Xiao family got married, Yue Tingfang got drunk, sitting in the Shuixie by the lake opposite their bridal chamber, staring at the flickering red candles across the shore, full of festivity, wishing he could drink all the wine in the Crown Prince Residence until none was left.
Jin Moning told the Emperor that he and Qinqin had known each other for many years and were deeply in love.
They were in love, so all he could do was drown his solitude in drink.
Why didn’t they tell him earlier that they were in love? Why wait until his hopes had soared, and his feelings had deepened?
Little did he know, he had it all planned out—if the Emperor had asked, he would not wait for Qinqin’s response and would take action first and report later.
But he was still one step too late.
With a bright red bridal veil over her head, Xiao Qinqin sat on the wedding bed, waiting for her groom. As time passed, her heartbeat quickened.
Until she heard his footsteps coming in, her heart finally started to pound as if it was about to burst out.
"Qinqin, I’ve made you wait," Jin Moning said as he lifted Xiao Qinqin’s bright red bridal veil. Her face, shyly lifted, was painted with delicate makeup. She looked less valiant than usual but had an added touch of a woman’s unique soft beauty.
"Qinqin, you’re so beautiful!" Jin Moning was enchanted for a moment.
The red curtains were warm, and the spring weather was delightful; he personally adorned her with a green Qingluan jade pendant.
This was the jade pendant given by the Empress Dowager, passed only to the Crown Prince’s principal wife, the future Empress.
Xiao Qinqin had always thought of herself as an eagle soaring the skies, her world vast and boundless, her man also an eagle capable of flying alongside her. Yet, because of that phrase, "you have captured my heart," she willingly became a bird in a gilded cage, forever by his side.
For those two years, they lived a life that everyone envied, like a fairy couple. He doted on her to the bone, and she loved him madly.
But the good times didn’t last. War broke out at the borders. The Xiao family’s army suffered a defeat, and Qinqin’s father and elder brother both died in battle consecutively, her mother died of grief, and the Xiao family’s influence in court plummeted. A once-great Xiao family was now propped up by a mere fourteen-year-old younger brother.
She said, "After my father’s defeat, his smiles towards me became fewer and when he did smile, it was always so forced."
One consort after another began entering the Crown Prince Residence—such a small place couldn’t accommodate so many beautiful women.
In Jin Moning’s large estate, she wasted her youth, and he betrayed her beauty.
When he finally captured her body, his heart no longer belonged to her alone.
She could dance on horseback with a long spear but couldn’t engage in the underhanded plotting of the other women. As they drove her to despair time and again, she finally made up her mind, left him a farewell letter, and took the child in her womb, hardly obtained, to escape far away.
"I cannot capture your heart, so neither can you imprison my body," she left him with only this sentence.
But fate wasn’t finished with her; the Crown Prince did not have an eldest son, how could he allow her child to exist?
She fled the Imperial City that had imprisoned her, only to find herself with nowhere to go.
After the downfall of the Xiao family, even he abandoned her—how much less could she expect from the friends of her father’s time?
She didn’t know whom to turn to—the only person that came to mind was Yue Tingfang, who by now had taken over the Marquis Residence of Lingnan.
When Yue Tingfang found her, the loyal Aling had taken her last breath, and she was surrounded and attacked by over a dozen men in black. Rescuing the barely alive Xiao Qinqin, she was still tightly protecting her belly.