CH 71

Villainous Prince (13)

Nie Qian Yu is not one to go back on her word.

As time passed Song Xu Yi became more worried that Nie Qian Yu had met with an accident. But the system reassured her, telling her that it could sense that Nie Qian Yu was still alive.

Since Nie Qian Yu hadn’t had an accident, where had she gone?

Song Xu Yi begged Empress Wang and Wang Mian to look for Nie Qian Yu, but as if she had suddenly disappeared from the world, she could not be found.

At the same stage in the plot summary, Nie Qian Yu was still living in the palace and was adored by the original and Liu Rumeng and other women, and was surrounded by people everywhere she went.

Where the hell is Nie Qian Yu?

In the following two years, most of Song Xu Yi’s efforts were focused on improving people’s livelihood. Being restricted by the Emperor, Song Xu Yi could not leave the palace, so she carefully wrote down the methods of compass, papermaking, printing and other inventions of her own time, and wrote to Wang Mian through a special channel to tell him about these methods. Wang Mian was well aware of the Emperor’s scorn for the clans and in order to protect Xu Yi, he simply said that it was invented by his own clansman.

The Emperor did not suspect, but secretly hated the growing power of the clans to no avail.

With Song Xu Yi’s deliberate support, the Wang family became more powerful every day.

However, the Wang family did not bully others at all, but became more discreet. Not only did they reduce the rent of their tenants, but they also sent farmers into the fields regularly to pass on their experience, and even gave a small piece of land next to the Wang family’s land to be cultivated rent-free…

Because of the Wang family’s generosity more people started to join the Wang family.

At the same time, Song Xu Yi did not give up asking the Wang family to help her find Nie Qian Yu as she was still a prince of the Wu Empire, and the Emperor had also sent people to search for her.

Even though the two largest powers in the country were searching for her, they could not find any trace of her, and only found that the last few people she met were from the Wu Empire…

Perhaps Nie Qian Yu had gone back to her homeland.

But Song Xu Yi always felt that there was something fishy about the matter.

The Emperor was advised to send troops to attack the Wu Empire as soon as possible, but the Emperor was so intent on dealing with the clans in the country that he suppressed all the war proposals.

As the days passed by, Song Xu Yi soon reached the age of eighteen.

With the Emperor’s interference, her marriage was a mess, and at first Empress Wang was in the mood to watch, but then she began to feel anxious.

Song Xu Yi had not been engaged and confessed to Empress Wang that she had no one in mind, while women of that age were usually already married.

However, Song Xu Yi had been too low-profile over the years, and her previous reputation was so bad that some men with good family backgrounds and good looks were unwilling to enter the princess’s residence, and the few who volunteered to be her consort were either unsightly or had hidden illnesses.

Empress Wang wanted to ask the Emperor for a marriage, but with the gradual growth of the Wang family, the Emperor has been treating Empress Wang and her daughter more and more coldly in the past two years… Not to mention giving her a marriage, Empress Wang now finds it difficult to see the Emperor…

Empress Wang, with the benefit of hindsight, finally understood the reason for the Emperor’s targeting of the pair of mother and daughter, and after her grief, Empress Wang also gave up the idea of relying on the Emperor and stopped thinking of choosing young talents from Lidu and wanted her father to choose suitable young talents from Zhongzhou to come and meet them there.

While Wang Mian was making plans to select a young man for Song Xu Yi, the news came from the border that the Wu Empire had sent troops to the border with the intention of attacking the Lishui Empire.

The new Crown Prince of the Wu Empire revitalises the country and waits for an opportunity to invade the border in the same way as described in the plot synopsis, except that the new Crown Prince is much smoother and calmer than the villain in the plot synopsis and knows how to buy people’s hearts.

All this gave Song Xu Yi a strong sense of familiarity.

Who is this new Crown Prince?

However this new Crown Prince is extremely mysterious, he seems to be in poor health because of snake venom and has been hiding in the palace and rarely goes to court, few people have ever seen his true face.

Everything seemed to be spiralling out of control.

The Wu Empire has been able to anticipate almost all of Lishui’s movements in advance and has gradually begun to encroach on Lishui’s borders. The Lishui Empire has been at peace for so long that it has not been able to overcome the aggressive Wu Empire for very long.

It was not until the Wu Empire had swallowed several cities that the Emperor realised that the Wu Empire was his number one enemy, and took the initiative to join the clans in the fight against the enemy. But the clans arrived too late, the Wu Empire had come prepared and the Lishui Empire was defeated, and everyone was in fear…

At this point, Song Xu Yi stepped forward and requested to go to the front line to develop weapons.

The Emperor did not think that Song Xu Yi, a woman, could do anything to help in the collapsing war effort and ignored her request, however, Wang Mian presented the Emperor with a request to allow Song Xu Yi to go to the front.

Now that most of the front line was being held up by the Wang family’s troops, the Emperor granted Song Xu Yi’s request in order to appease the Wang family.

By the time Song Xu Yi reached the border from Lishui, the Wu Empire had captured several more cities.

Seeing that the Lishui Empire was about to be destroyed, the anxious Emperor decided to surrender and become a vassal of the Wu Empire for a chance of survival.

Who would have thought that in just a few years, the situation between the two countries would have undergone such a radical change?

Almost as soon as Song Xu Yi arrived at the border, the Emperor’s messenger sent to surrender arrived with a huge pile of gold, silver, treasure and beauties and a surrender letter to cede land and pay compensation.

Song Xu Yi, who was experimenting with gunpowder at the border, looked at the messenger who had come to make peace, and even though she had known about the Emperor’s mediocrity for a long time, her heart still rose with anger, and even more anger at the Wang family who had been defending the border against the Wu Empire——the Wang family had led the private armies of the clans for so long and had sacrificed countless of their sons at the border, and knew better than anyone else the wolfish ambitions of the Wu Empire: the Lishui Empire was likely to lose their hearts and minds. There was no way the Wu Empire would agree to a surrender!

The imperial family tried their best to prevent it, but the Emperor seemed determined to surrender, and the messenger finally presented the surrender letter to the Wu Empire.

Within a few days, news arrived from the Wu Empire that at the border city of Wanhua, the Crown Prince of the Wu Empire would host a banquet to meet with the messenger.

The banquet was the key to peace talks or continued war!

At this time, Song Xu Yi’s gunpowder was also successfully developed.

After Song Xu Yi demonstrated the power of the gunpowder, the Wang family was overjoyed, and immediately agreed with Song Xu Yi to attack——the Wang family would use the gunpowder to attack the rest of the Wu camp while the messenger was meeting with the Prince. At the same time, they found someone to infiltrate the banquet and assassinate the Prince.

On the day of the banquet, Song Xu Yi wanted to enter the party disguised as a servant girl to see what the Crown Prince of the Wu Empire looked like.

When the messenger heard Song Xu Yi’s request, he thought that Song Xu Yi wanted to see the missing prince of the Wu Empire, so he gave her a few words of advice, but Song Xu Yi seemed so determined that the messenger finally agreed to let Song Xu Yi disguise herself as a dancer and enter the banquet.

Song Xu Yi was not sure what the messenger was thinking, she did so purely because she was uneasy in her heart.

Even though sensibly she felt that this new Crown Prince had nothing to do with Nie Qian Yu, Song Xu Yi still wanted to take a look: in case it was really Nie Qian Yu who had become the new Crown Prince, having known each other for a while, Song Xu Yi could not bear to see Nie Qian Yu die at the hands of the assassin she had sent.

Little did anyone know that while Song Xu Yi was deliberating with the others, two colourful birds were perched on the branches, listening to all their conversations…

Soon, the day of the banquet arrived.

The dancers’ clothes were extremely revealing and curvaceous, and Song Xu Yi had never worn such clothes before. The girl in the bronze mirror had red cheeks and was wearing enchanting make-up, looking innocent and bright, and her figure was shapely, less skinny and more fat.

Afraid of being noticed by the Wang family, Song Xu Yi proposed that all the dancers wear veils, and thus managed to conceal herself from the Wang family, pretending to be a dancer and taking a carriage to Wanhua City.

Song Xu Yi did not know how to dance, but fortunately the messenger gave her an insignificant dancing position, so she could just shake her fan in place.

After a day of training, the feast finally began.

However, the main seat remained empty until the new Crown Prince of the Wu Empire arrived in the second half of the feast.

The new Crown Prince was not very tall for a man, and his body looked as thin as a green bamboo. At first glance, he appeared to fit the rumoured description of being frail and sickly, but the new Crown Prince did not reveal his face——he wore an extremely delicate silver mask that covered the upper part of his face.

From Song Xu Yi’s perspective, she could only see fair skin, red lips without a dot, and a perfectly curved jawline, while the new Crown Prince’s collar was buttoned up so high that it was impossible to tell if he had a throat knot.

After a few years of absence, Song Xu Yi did not know what Nie Qian Yu looked like today, only that the ‘Crown Prince’ in front of her was taller than the previous Nie Qian Yu, and looked thinner…

It shouldn’t be Nie Qian Yu…

The new Crown Prince on the main seat kept drinking wine and watching the dance and song, seemingly unmoved.

The new Crown Prince’s eyes always fell on her, intentionally or unintentionally, and Song Xu Yi didn’t know if it was her own mistake.

Song Xu Yi had been on edge all night, her palms were sweating, and at some point, her head was getting dizzy…

Song Xu Yi’s vision became hazy, and in her last glimpse, the prince on the throne slowly put down his wine glass and slapped his hands together, and guards came out from around the palace with the assassins sent by the royal family, while another soldier came from afar to report: “The enemy army that attacked by surprise had extremely powerful weapons, and the forces of the Wu Empire were narrowly defeated in ambush, and the enemy army has retreated… “

“Oh no, I’ve been trapped…”

This was the last thought Song Xu Yi had before she fell unconscious.