Chapter 9

Jiang Yin's eyes turned cold in an instant, and he viciously squeezed her chin with his fingers. "What did you say?!"

A man's dignity cannot be looked down upon.

Moreover, he harbored ambitions to control the world in his heart.

Such an ambitious person would never allow a woman whom he had never looked up to in the first place to discard him like worn shoes.

Gu Ying was fearless of the pain and stared at him stubbornly. "I said you are not worthy."

Jiang Yin had never felt so irritated before. The girl in front of him still had the same face, but her eyes were as cold as an icy pond, making him startled for a moment.

After being startled, his heart was filled with intense anger.

"Gu Ying, you're courting death!"

Gu Ying felt her neck being viciously squeezed by his five fingers, making it harder and harder to breathe.

But compared to the endless injustice in her last life, this was nothing.

She sneered twice, grabbed his sturdy arm with both hands, recalled the martial arts her father had taught her, bent her knees, lifted her legs, and kicked with all her might between his vital legs.

"Ah!"

Jiang Yin staggered back two steps and let out a suppressed scream of pain. His eyes were filled with boiling anger.

Before he could react, he was hit in the back of the head by a flying porcelain vase.

This time, he swayed unsteadily and completely fainted.

After Jiang Yin fell to the ground, a thin and weak young boy who had appeared out of nowhere was revealed behind him.

Gu Ying panted heavily and looked at Gu Ning's pale complexion standing not far away with misty eyes, "Ning..." Gu Ning looked at her in horror and anxiety, with hands that kept shaking, "He's dead... he's dead..."

Gu Ying ran over quickly and hugged his thin body tightly in her arms, "Don't worry Ning, he's not dead, just passed out."

"He died!" Gu Ning suddenly raised his head, his little face as white as paper.

"He's not dead, trust your sister." She hugged the boy and pulled him onto the bed, stroking his wet little face distressfully but also amusedly. "Ning is so nice to sister, knowing that sister was being bullied and still willing to help sister. Ning is so good, sister loves loves loves Ning so much!"

Gu Ning looked at her incredulously.

He was as pretty as a girl with long and dark eyelashes, and his sickly pale complexion made him look like a small kitten. His blank gaze swept over his sister's face for a while, as if wondering whether his sister's words of love were true or false.

"Yanzhi!"

Yanzhi was keeping watch outside. Hearing the call, she hurried in.

"Miss, wha-" Seeing the man on the ground, she exclaimed in shock, "How did Young Master Jiang end up like this?!"

Gu Ying scoffed, "A scourge like him won't die so easily."

She also wanted to kill him now to avenge herself.

But giving him a quick painless death, how could it compare to torturing him slowly?

Furthermore, with a prestigious scholar inexplicably dead in the Earl's manor, there would be no way to explain it clearly.

It would be better to make good use of him and prevent Gu Jia from ever fulfilling his dream of rising up proudly.

"Then-" Yanzhi leaned forward to check and breathed a long sigh of relief, "He's indeed still alive. Miss, Dr. Liu seems to have been called away by Madam. If Madam comes over with her people later and sees Young Master Jiang here, we'd better jump into the Yellow River for a bath."

Gu Ying stroked Gu Ning's back as he stopped shuddering. She held his face that was so thin it barely looked human, and soothed him first, "Ning, sister is busy now, be a good boy, drink your medicine and sleep well okay? Sister will definitely come see you tomorrow."

Gu Ning stubbornly shook his head. His dark eyes looked at Gu Ying warily, "Don't want medicine."

He didn't believe his sister would come to see him and be nice to him.

"If you drink the medicine, you won't cough or feel uncomfortable."

"Don't want it."

Gu Ning struggled out of her arms and curled up in the quilt, only showing her his back of the head, "Don't want...don't want...don't want medicine."

Gu Ying sighed inwardly, the estrangement between siblings could not be eliminated in a short while.

She patted the boy's back and said, "Alright, no medicine for now. You sleep well."

There was no movement from the quilt. The boy lay there, with his bony little cheeks flushed.

Gu Ying looked at him lovingly for a while before getting up. "Yanzhi, I remember you're quite strong."

Yanzhi slapped her biceps proudly and lifted her chin. "Good enough."

Gu Ying smiled amusedly. "The young ladies in Bianjing all say that the second madam of my family is an uncouth martial artist who raised an unruly violent daughter. We can't disappoint them, right?"

Yanzhi pouted. "Miss is definitely not violent at all, much prettier than them!"

Gu Ying shook her head with a helpless smile. "Come on, help your miss out. If we succeed, I'll reward you with a title of Madam."

Yanzhi didn't really want to become a Madam.

Her dream was to stay by the Miss's side for life. When the Miss gets married, she would go along and serve the Miss like an ox.

"Whatever Miss says goes. Let's do it!"

The mistress and servant busied themselves.

Not until the room door closed.

The quilt on the bed stirred slightly, and a head poked out from inside, blinking its bright eyes and staring fixedly in the direction they had left, murmuring softly, "Will sister really love Ning?"

...

After working hard for most of the night.

Gu Ying could finally take a breather in her own yard.

The lights in the Earl's manor lit up and livened up again for a while.

When Yanzhi came back from scouting for news, she smiled merrily, "Miss guessed right. Madam did take a large group of people to Muffeng Studio to see our brother Ning, but Ning was asleep. With no maidservants inside or outside the room to serve them, they naturally didn't see the Young Master Jiang they wanted to catch in adultery either. Madam's face was so green from anger, and has now gone back to her own courtyard."

Gu Ying couldn't fall asleep after being tortured to death and revived. Anyone would have trouble sleeping.

She lit a lamp and sat properly at the desk, picked up a writing brush, spread out a sheet of white paper, and started writing.

"What is Miss writing?" Yanzhi squeezed over, full of curiosity. The Miss knowing how to write suddenly after bathing in the river, she would have to take a dip tomorrow too.

Gu Ying stared blankly at the poem, smiling bitterly as she recited softly, "Asking in this world what love is, leads only to vows of lifelong fidelity."

Yanzhi was even more in awe of her own Miss, and naturally flattered unthinkingly, "Though this servant doesn't recognize words, what Miss wrote looks so beautiful."

"Not knowing words doesn't matter. What's important is that as a woman, one shouldn't fall in love with someone casually. If that person is wrong, then that love is wrong too. One wrong leads to endless wrongs, in the end it will only shatter one's heart and make living worse than death." Gu Ying smiled and handed her the paper, "Yanzhi, go burn this."

Yanzhi was dumbfounded. "Has Miss been in love before? You speak knowledgeably, as if hurt by some bad man."

How could the Miss who wasn't even married have so many feelings?

Gu Ying sniffed and felt a sharp pain in her heart.

She was silent for several breaths, lowered her long lashes, and concealed all her emotions as she declared resolutely, "No, and I will never be in the future."

Yanzhi didn't dare to speak, frightened by the coldness in her Miss's eyes.

She obediently held the paper and went out to destroy the evidence.

In the cold winter night of the twelfth lunar month, the frigid wind rustled. Outside, heavy snow fell and the branches were all bare except for that plum blossom tree.

Yanzhi stared left and right at the poem, still feeling that the Miss had written it very well.

She couldn't bear to burn it. She took a trowel and went under the plum blossom tree in the yard. She dug a hole in the dirt and buried the poem in it.

Then she got up and went back to her own room to sleep.

After she left, the wall of Twilight Snow Studio stirred slightly. A dark shadow shook off all the snowy whiteness on its body.

"Prince, sneaking into Dongping Earl Manor and peeping at beauties in the middle of the night, what exactly is the purpose?"