Lüdou’s resentment toward Xiao Che for having kidnapped her vanished in an instant.
Instead, she now felt deeply grateful to him.
Lüdou knelt before Xiao Che and performed a curtsey.
“Thank you for saving our Princess!”
Duoduo found it a little amusing. She pulled Lüdou to her feet.
“Lüdou, the most urgent thing now is to help him treat his wound.”
“Right, right!” Lüdou reached into her sleeve, pulled out a vial of wound-healing powder, and handed it to Duoduo.
“I’ll go fetch some water,” Lüdou said hurriedly as she left the room.
Duoduo noticed that Xiao Che was watching her with a pensive look.
She pointed to a stool nearby.
“Sit down. Back when Lüdou got beaten, I was the one who put medicine on her too!”
Xiao Che walked over and sat down. “Changle, how old are you?”
Duoduo tilted her small head. “Four. Why do you ask?”
Xiao Che stared at her, his gaze turning deep and contemplative.
“Changle, have you ever heard of the Fan Rebellion?”
Duoduo looked confused.
At that moment, she saw golden characters floating in the air before her.
[- The Fan Rebellion? Wasn’t that a chaos that happened a few years later?
- Why would the Eighth Prince bring this up?
- How could Duoduo possibly know about something that hasn’t happened yet?
- Wait... Could Xiao Che have been reborn?]
The golden characters scrolled on without stopping, and Duoduo stood frozen in place.
Reborn?
What did that mean?
Suddenly, she remembered a story Li Jin had once told her.
In that story, he said that if someone carried too heavy a grudge, they might get a second chance at life by some twist of fate.
She recalled asking him curiously at the time what “a second chance at life” meant.
Li Jin had explained that it meant being reborn at some earlier point in life — that such people often sought revenge and tried to create a different ending than before.
So Xiao Che had been reborn!
This realization made everything click into place.
She understood now why the golden characters had insisted Xiao Che should have died, but he hadn’t.
It turned out he had lived through it before and come back.
That explained everything.
But why had he gone to the Ancestral Temple? And why had he been chased and attacked?
Duoduo’s stunned expression was not lost on Xiao Che.
His tense nerves relaxed slightly.
Duoduo blinked, putting on a curious look. “What is the Fan Rebellion? I don’t understand.”
“Did the Grand Tutor teach that? I don’t remember.”
“Wait — you always sleep through class! How would you know?”
“Hey, Xiao Che, are you secretly studying after class?”
Xiao Che looked at Duoduo’s soft, adorable face and pressed his lips together.
“Call me Eighth Uncle.”
Duoduo pouted.
Just then, Lüdou walked in carrying a basin of hot water.
“Princess, I found a bottle of wine in the kitchen,” Lüdou said, pulling out a flask from inside her robe.
Duoduo opened it and sniffed. “Wow! Smells great. What a waste, though!”
She smiled innocently at Xiao Che. “We need to use this to disinfect your wound. Bear with it — it’ll heal soon.”
Without giving him a moment to prepare, Duoduo poured the wine directly over the wound.
“Agh!” Xiao Che cried out sharply as a piercing pain shot through him.
After rinsing the wound clean, Duoduo deftly poured the medicinal powder onto it.
Lüdou’s wound-healing powder was actually quite good. Duoduo watched as the blood met the powder and quickly clotted.
“Lüdou, tear off a clean piece of this gauze,” Duoduo ordered.
At once, Lüdou found some scissors and cut the bandage into two lengths.
Duoduo used the clean section and carefully bandaged Xiao Che’s wound.
“Remember, you owe me a bottle of wine,” Duoduo said with a pained look, shaking the flask so the remaining half swished inside.
Xiao Che, feeling the sting in his arm and watching Duoduo, wore a complex expression.
He sometimes felt that Changle seemed more like someone reborn — just like himself.
Why else would her behavior be so far beyond her age?
But when he had tested her earlier, she hadn’t shown shock or nervousness, only normal confusion.
That meant Changle wasn’t what he had imagined.
Still, for a four-year-old child to possess such mature, sensible behavior — the only explanation was that she had gone through extraordinary hardship.
Xiao Che found himself growing curious about Duoduo.
“That day, how did you end up at the Ancestral Temple?” Xiao Che asked as he carefully adjusted his robes.
Duoduo’s eyes lit up. She also wanted to know why he’d been there.
“The Grand Tutor took me there,” Duoduo answered without hesitation.
Xiao Che’s expression turned surprised. “The Grand Tutor took you? Why would he bring you there?”
Duoduo shook her head.
“I don’t know why the Grand Tutor took me either.”
“But it was kind of fun,” she said with a sweet smile.
“There were Taoist priests performing rituals, and Grandfather knelt down and bowed.”
Duoduo tilted her head to look at him.
“Speaking of which, why were you there too?”
She noticed that Xiao Che avoided her gaze.
“I was also curious to see what a prayer for rain looked like, so I sneaked over to watch.”
Duoduo could tell immediately that Xiao Che was lying.
She pursed her lips, looking displeased.
“I told you everything you asked me,” she said.
“If you don’t want to answer, you can just say no. There’s no need to lie to me!”
“That’s not being a sincere person!”
Her accusation caught Xiao Che off guard, and he paused for a moment.
After a while, he lowered his head slowly.
“I haven’t seen Father in a long time.”
“I wanted to take a chance and see him...”
Duoduo’s eyes widened.
“Aren’t you the Eighth Prince? Why would you have to sneak around just to see your own father?”
Xiao Che kept his head down and said nothing.
Duoduo tilted her head back and forth, thoroughly confused.
“By the way, who was chasing you that day and trying to kill you?”
The moment she asked, Xiao Che’s head shot up.
“How do you know someone was chasing me?”
Duoduo blinked innocently.
“That day, after you got off the carriage, I saw a few men in black chasing you into an alley.”
“They were all holding knives. That wound you’ve got — you got it back then, didn’t you?”
She shook her head lightly. “But it’s been several days. Why isn’t it better?”
“Didn’t you use any medicine? Aren’t you a prince?”
As she kept speaking, she noticed Xiao Che’s face growing darker.
She even caught a glint of murderous intent flash through his eyes.
But Duoduo wasn’t scared at all. Instead, she smiled at him brightly.
“Eighth Uncle, if you’re trying to talk to Grandfather about something, you can tell me, and I’ll pass the message along for you.”
Seeing his uncertain expression, Duoduo beamed again.
“Eighth Uncle, I have a jade pendant that Grandfather gave me!”
“Maybe I can help make your wish come true!”
