Arestless night was a bit of a strain on Wei Zhao’s body in his current state, and he fell asleep as soon as he wrapped his arms around Yi Yin.

There was no hope of a good dream for him; noises suddenly came from the front yard, and Wei Zhao, who was always a light sleeper, was immediately woken up. Yi Yin was startled by his movement and opened his eyes, rubbing them with his fists.

Wei Zhao reached out to touch Yi Yin’s small, red sleepy face and said in a low voice, “It’s alright, you go back to sleep, I’ll go out and take a look.”

“Oh!” Yi Yin was not yet fully awake, so when he heard Wei Zhao say this, he nodded drowsily and obediently closed his eyes.

At this moment, the front courtyard was already in chaos, for it was none other than the ill-tempered Great Yan-zhi who was looking for Wei Zhao in great displeasure.

Yesterday, when Pei Di failed to bully Yi Yin and was beaten up by him until his face was swollen and his nose was bleeding, due to excessive fright and freezing in the snow, Pei Di fell ill when he went back. He had a high fever that didn’t go away. The Great Yan-zhi was so scared and busy that she didn’t even have time to find Wei Zhao to settle accounts.

After a night of recuperation, Pei Di’s condition stabilised, and after the Great Yan-zhi asked Xianhan and Zhe Zhe what had happened yesterday, she brought her people to the Northern Courtyard.

The Great Yan-zhi was from the Herong clan, the second largest of the seven clans of Fuyu after the Helian clan. Helian Zhuo was not the son of the main wife, nor did he rank high among the sons of the late king, but he was able to kill many of his brothers and ascend to the position of the king, and the Herong clan contributed to it greatly.

Her parental family had been instrumental in Helian Zhuo’s ascension to the throne, so the Great Yan-zhi was able to stand up proudly in front of him. She was a jealous woman who loved Helian Zhuo with all her heart and couldn’t see him with any other woman.

Helian Zhuo was not lascivious and wanton. If only the Great Yan-zhi had been more docile and hadn’t repeated in front of him all the time that without the Herong clan, he wouldn’t be here today, they might have been able to be a loving couple, or at least respect each other.

Unfortunately, she was too arrogant, always acting as if Helian Zhuo owed her family a lot, which made Helian Zhuo sick and tired of her. It was true that the Herong clan had helped him, but he had also given them a lot in return, and they didn’t owe each other anything, so there was no reason to talk about it every day.

After Pei Di was born, Helian Zhuo felt that he had done his part to repay the Herong family, so he added some concubines to his harem, otherwise he would have been angry at the Herong family for having to deal with the Great Yan-zhi all day long.

The Great Yan-zhi was very dissatisfied with this and fought with Helian Zhuo several times, driving him crazy. If it weren’t for the sake of her father and brother, he would have sent her home long ago.

Later, when seeing that the relationship of the two of them had become unbearable, the Great Yan-zhi’s mother went to the palace to persuade her daughter to put up with the situation for a while. Those women were of ordinary origin and had not given birth to a single child, so the king would not take them to heart and they were no threat to her.

It was not that the Great Yan-zhi didn’t understand this, she just didn’t want to accept it. The man she loved with all her heart and soul, why could he not love her alone? It was only after Lady Herong persuaded her for a long time that she reluctantly agreed to calm down and stop fighting with Helian Zhuo.

A brief period of peace came to Helian Zhuo’s harem. However, the good times didn’t last long; Pei Di had just celebrated his second birthday when Helian Zhuo placed a male pet in the palace.

A male pet would have been nothing since the Great Yan-zhi already tolerated Helian Zhuo’s concubines. The problem was that the male pet had a son, a healthy baby boy that was born soon.

Advertisements

The Great Yan-zhi’s long-suppressed anger was burning again. Although Helian Zhuo had already told her that Wei Zhao was merely his exclusive property, and his son could not threaten Pei Di’s status, for the Great Yan-zhi Wei Zhao and his son were like a thorn in her eye. She hated them and couldn’t wait to get rid of them.

She could see that Helian Zhuo treated Wei Zhao differently from his concubines. If he was an ordinary male pet, how could Helian Zhuo have arranged for him to be served by someone so carefully chosen that even she, the Great Yan-zhi, could not intervene?

Out of a woman’s instinct, the Great Yan-zhi didn’t touch Helian Zhuo’s bottom line, that is, she didn’t actively harm Wei Zhao. However, teaching Pei Di to bully Yi Yin was a hobby that the Great Yan-zhi enjoyed.

Every time she heard Pei Di talk about how he bullied Yi Yin but Helian Zhuo didn’t say or do anything, she would sneer in her heart that Wei Zhao was nothing more than a toy for Helian Zhuo, otherwise he would not have turned a deaf ear to Pei Di’s actions.

What she couldn’t have imagined was that Pei Di, two years older than Yi Yin and surrounded by five or six other boys, would be beaten like that by Yi Yin.

The Fuyu people were tough, not to mention the men, but also the women. Even though she was a princess of the Herong clan, she had been brought up like a boy, riding horses, shooting arrows and playing with whips.

If she was going to trouble Wei Zhao, she wouldn’t leave it to others, she would carry the whip herself. When she arrived at the Northern Courtyard, the Great Yan-zhi didn’t even let anyone report and barged straight in, startling the maids who had stayed up late yesterday and were dozing off.

“Where’s the little bastard, tell him to get his ass out here!” The Great Yan-zhi was furious, and her whip cracked so loudly that the maids of the Northern Courtyard trembled in fear.

So far this year, Helian Zhuo had favoured Farida and had not set foot in the Great Yan-zhi’s bedroom for a long time. The anger in the Great Yan-zhi’s heart didn’t only stem from Wei Zhao and Yi Yin. Even her father had asked her mother to remind her several times that the bigger picture was important and that she should not cause any more trouble, so she had to grit her teeth and put up with it even though she hated Farida with a passion. Wei Zhao was a different story. He was nothing more than an exclusive property of Helian Zhuo and had no proper status. What qualifications did he have to act proudly in front of her?

Of course, Wei Zhao was the fourth prince of the Great Yan, the fact that the Great Yan-zhi knew, but Wei Zhao was not married, he was captured on the battlefield, so his status as a prince was useless.

Even if he had given birth to a son to Helian Zhuo, the child was still an illegitimate  bastard, how could he compare to her Pei Di. But that little bastard, how dare he injure her Pei Di…

When she thought of this, the blue veins of the Great Yan-zhi’s hands protruded. The first thing she did was to smash the few furnishings in the front hall with her whip.

Just as she finished smashing, Wei Zhao came out from the backyard and didn’t salute when he saw her, but just looked at her indifferently.

Advertisements

When the Great Yan-zhi looked up, she saw that Wei Zhao was dressed in a cloak made of white tiger fur, and his long black hair was simply tied in the back. He had obviously just gotten up and didn’t have time to freshen up.

Seeing the cloak on Wei Zhao’s body, the Great Yan-zhi’s already displeased face became even more ugly. She remembered very clearly that this white tiger had been hunted by Helian Zhuo himself during the hunting trip in the autumn of the previous year. She wanted to make a quilt for Pei Di, but Helian Zhuo refused. She insisted and had a fight with him. The matter was only settled when Helian Zhuo gave Pei Di a few fire fox furs. Now it turned out that he had given the precious white tiger fur to Wei Zhao! How could the Great Yan-zhi not be angry? She immediately swung her whip at Wei Zhao.

Wei Zhao’s internal energy had been inhibited by Helian Zhuo’s medicine, but his martial arts skills were still intact, so he dodged sideways to avoid the blow, but it made the Great Yan-zhi even angrier.

“Bitch! Hand the little bastard over to me!” Seeing that Wei Zhao dared to dodge, the Great Yan-zhi swung the whip again, but it was still dodged by Wei Zhao.

When she was about to strike again, Yi Yin, who had been woken up by the scuffle outside, came out staggering, wrapped in a cloak, with a bewildered and innocent look on his face.

The face of the nanny watching from the side immediately changed. My little ancestor, why did you run out at this time? The Great Yan-zhi is angry, even if the king was here, he couldn’t save you.

Of course, if Yi Yin didn’t come out of the house, with the Great Yan-zhi’s temper he would have been brought out anyway. It was only a matter of time; there was no difference.

When she saw Yi Yin running out, the Great Yan-zhi immediately changed her mind and swung her whip at him with a quick and sharp movement.

With Yi Yin’s current small stature, he couldn’t escape in any way. He stumbled backwards with his short legs and took two steps before he realised that the whip was still about to fall on him, so he could only wait.

The Great Yan-zhi’s skills were many times stronger than her son’s. If Yi Yin had taken the whip, his skin and flesh would have been split open.

Luckily, Wei Zhao was quick to react and pounced at the crucial moment, shielding Yi Yin from the blow with his body.

When Yi Yin heard the sound of the whip slicing through the flesh, his heart tightened. It turned out that Wei Zhao would do this for him.

The Great Yan-zhi’s blow succeeded, and when she was about to strike again, the maid next to her stopped her and said that the Second Prince was also the son of the king. It was not appropriate to beat him, so she might as well…

The maid who spoke out was brought into the palace by the Great Yan-zhi from home. She was the daughter of the Great Yan-zhi’s wet nurse and grew up with the Great Yan-zhi since she was a child. She had a calm temperament and was loyal to the Great Yan-zhi. Lady Herong asked her to follow the Great Yan-zhi, hoping that she would dissuade her daughter from impulsive moves. 

The Great Yan-zhi admitted that her milk sister’s words made sense, but as long as she thought of Pei Di, who was still lying on the kang, she felt that she would not be comfortable if she didn’t give Yi Yin a good beating.

The whip was raised high in her hand, but when she looked at the almost unrecognisable Yi Yin, she could not bring herself to do it, not because she was soft-hearted, but because she thought that child was not strong enough to be beaten, and that two lashes would be enough to kill him. She was afraid Helian Zhuo wouldn’t forgive it.

After all, Helian Zhuo only had two sons, and just because he didn’t care about Yi Yin didn’t mean that he would allow someone to kill his own son.

No matter how serious the consequences of a children’s fight could be, if she personally took action, she might get Pei Di involved, and with Farida watching, she could not afford offending Helian Zhuo to this extent.

If Yi Yin couldn’t be beaten, didn’t she still have Wei Zhao? He was a martial artist, so he could take a few more blows to help her take the edge off of her anger.

So, the Great Yan-zhi pretended to hit Yi Yin, but in fact, every whip was aimed at Wei Zhao.

Wei Zhao had no internal strength to protect himself. He had been tortured by Helian Zhuo for the past few years, so his body was not as strong as before. He could barely avoid the whip of the Great Yan-zhi by himself, and there was nothing he could do with Yi Yin, who needed his protection. 

The Great Yan-zhi’s whip blows rained down on Wei Zhao, but Yi Yin was protected in his arms and was unharmed.

Yi Yin bit his lip and cried silently. He had been careless and had provoked Pei Di without being able to defend himself, and as a result, he had dragged Wei Zhao into it.

In the end, when the Great Yan-zhi was tired of beating Wei Zhao and because she was afraid of killing him, she finally stopped, cursed them and turned around with her people to leave.

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like