Chapter 177

177 The lies they spread

Li Hua kept her eyes on him despite they were again filled with tears. “Your Highness, doesn’t it hurt when the person you trusted the most betrayed you? I am not supposed to cry for him, but those memories hurt. If I hadn’t asked my Eldest Brother to talk with my late father about letting me marry Feng Lao, probably I would not have seen this day.” She regretted everything at this moment.

“Then, they would have found another way to kill all of you,” Lóng Wei stated. “The things which are bound to happen cannot be changed,” he proclaimed.

“Feng Lao was close to my Elder First Brother. I wonder how he must be feeling after knowing all this. He must be broken from inside more than me,” Li Hua said and her lips quivered.

“Tonight, you can regret everything. If you want to weep, then you can do that too. As I said earlier too, after today, you will never cry thinking about that betrayal or other things associated with that. You need to be an iron lady, Li Hua,” Lóng Wei affirmed. Li Hua nodded and wiped her eyes from the pad of her fingers.

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“If His Highness allows the others to come inside, then that will be better,” Li Hua requested. Lóng Wei got up and went to the door. He slid them and walked outside. To his surprise, Mingquan, Xu Zifan, and Huang Xi hadn’t left.

“How is she?” Xu Zifan asked him first.

“Better. You all can come inside,” Lóng Wei told them and stepped aside from the door. Promptly, Xu Zifan went inside followed by the other two.

Xu Zifan halted to see his sister and the first thing he felt appropriate was to apologize to her.

“Please don’t make me embarrassed by doing so. It wasn’t your fault either,” Li Hua said. Her nose was still red and a slight redness was present on the cheeks too. Lóng Wei told Xu Zifan to take his seat, which he did.

.....

“Sister-in-law, I admire that you didn’t take too much time to understand the situation. The Shui Family is currently holding the power which is highest in any county or province. So, it would be foolish to go and kill any of them. Also,” Mingquan looked at Lóng Wei and continued, “brother Lóng Wei found out that someone from Qinping is also involved.”

“His Highness told me about this,” Li Hua replied. “I understood that I cannot make any decisions in a hurry,” she said.

“The Fourth Brother retrieved a personal diary of your late father from the residence. Some pages are burned while on some pages ink has dispersed because of the water. I read it and from there found that Xu Guang Li had received a letter in the past from Qinping. He had written about it in that diary. However, the next pages were not clear enough because the water had wet those pages.”

Lóng Wei informed both brother and sister about it.

“Xu Zifan, do you know anything about this?” Lóng Wei asked. “Your father might have been troubled. You would have noticed that too,” he said and wondered if he knew.

“Father never discussed it, nor did I see him troubled. Also, I didn’t know he kept a diary for himself.” Xu Zifan had no idea about the message that his father got from Qinping.

“I had seen it several times. Our father would be lost in some thoughts,” Li Hua said. “Mother also asked him once, but he said it was the workload.”

“When did you find out?” Lóng Wei asked.

“Last summer,” Li Hua answered.

“Did Princess Consort ever ask her father the reason for his worries?” Huang Xi inquired this time.

“I did a few times. I made a special tea for him, but he never shared anything. Probably, he thought I was too young to know all that,” Li Hua replied. She recalled the only thing she used to care about was getting married to Feng Lao.

“If he was unable to share with his wife or sons, then there are few chances that he would share his worries with Sister-in-law,” Mingquan concluded.

“Father went to Qinping for some work last year in the summertime. But he didn’t let either Xu Zuwen or me accompany him,” Xu Zifan informed them. “He said it is a meeting organized by an official. So, lower rank officials from seven towns were invited including this one,” he affirmed.

“It could be a lie too,” Mingquan said. “Below the second rank, hardly officials are invited for meetings. Even sometimes second rank officials aren’t prioritized. So, your father lied.”

“He visited us last summer,” Huang Xi answered. “But I do not remember anything about the meeting,” he stated.

“So, it’s clear now that Xu Guang Li indeed got a message from Qinping, but from whom it is unknown. We will find it later. Currently, we need to find out who helped the Shui Family and,” Lóng Wei tilted his head to look at Li Hua, “why Feng Lao asked Li Hua to leave Xinshui. Why did he save her but not the others?”

“I still think that he was affectionate towards Princess Consort,” Huang Xi said. “What if he had family pressure to marry that woman?” He raised suspicion.

“No. He never loved me. If he did, then he would have come to find me as per the promise. But he never came. That night he confessed but that was all a lie. Even though I went to his home several times with my brothers, he never once admitted his feelings. It was me who always did that. However, that night, he admitted. I asked him to save my father, but he didn’t. My father was surrounded by enemies, but not Shui Xiaoqing. Now, I remember it. How could I be so naive and ignore that?”

They were surprised to find that Li Hua’s thoughts aligned with Lóng Wei’s. He also had made the same assumptions as hers.

“Princess Consort, the Sixth Prince also had concluded the same. Whoa! You two are definitely made for each other,” Huang Xi said with a broad smile. Li Hua glanced at Lóng Wei, who was smiling at her.

“Li Hua wants to share a plan with us,” Lóng Wei informed them.

“A plan?” Xu Zifan exclaimed.

“Just like they destroyed us, I will do the same,” Li Hua asserted. “I heard that Shui Xiaoqing told the Fourth Prince that he would complain to the King about the Sixth Prince’s behavior. The time has come when the Elder First Brother and I must show ourselves to them. The lies they spread among the people, we must lift the curtain from those lies,” she affirmed.