The system voice in her mind continued its relentless broadcast, showing no signs of fatigue.
[Ding — Po value under continuous assessment. Experience points +3.]
[Ding — Po value under continuous assessment. Experience points +5.]
[Ding — Po value...]
Chu Mingzhao could even picture Pei Yan's grinding teeth and furious movements in the stable, just by the frequency of the experience points jumping.
What a disaster.
Chu Mingzhao hurried toward the main courtyard, the tips of her ears flushed with a guilty pink.
Back in her bedchamber, she threw herself directly into the soft brocade quilt and yanked the blanket over her head, trying to shut out the relentless prompts.
The damned alerts rang incessantly for an entire hour.
From the initial dense, rapid bursts, to the intermittent pauses, and finally to a long, drawn-out settling sound.
Chu Mingzhao felt as if her nerves had been fried to charcoal on an iron griddle, leaving her without even the strength to flip over.
[Ding — This side story segment concluded. Current experience points: 400/500.]
Chu Mingzhao crawled out from under the covers and stared at the string of glowing blue numbers, unsure whether to laugh or cry.
One hundred experience points.
If she had relied on passive, normal plot progression, how many times would she have needed Pei Yan to grab her by the throat to save up that many points?
Now, with just one packet of animal medicine, she had gotten rich overnight.
But the cost of seeking fortune through danger was far too steep. Earning these experience points felt like sacrificing her very life span.
A soft patter of footsteps sounded outside the door.
“Miss...”
Cuizhu called out from beyond the door curtain, her voice still laced with lingering panic.
“What has you so alarmed?”
Chu Mingzhao leisurely pulled a soft pillow behind her back to prop herself up, putting on the airs of a lofty mistress.
Cuizhu lifted the thick felt curtain, letting in a gust of the cold outside air.
The young maid carried a bowl of calming herbal tea, carefully placed it on the rosewood round table, her eyes darting with hesitation, as if she had something to say but didn’t dare.
“If you have something to say, spit it out. All this hemming and hawing, what are you, a thief?”
Chu Mingzhao picked up her teacup, skimming off the surface foam.
Cuizhu swallowed her saliva, leaned in closer, and lowered her voice.
“I just went to the main kitchen to hurry along the midday meal. On the way, I passed by the northwest corner gate and asked around a bit. That... that stable hand locked himself in the stable for a full hour without a sound.”
Chu Mingzhao’s hand holding the teacup paused slightly, sending ripples across the surface of the tea.
“And then?”
“Then the door opened. He smashed the ice in the courtyard’s large water vat, hauled up over a dozen buckets of well water, and poured them over himself...”
Smack.
The lid of Chu Mingzhao’s teacup struck the rim with a sharp crack.
Midwinter. The bitter cold of late December.
First, he was doused in ice water laced with potent drugs, then he endured a full hour in the drafty stable, and finally, he scrubbed himself down with freezing well water.
Chu Mingzhao felt her own teeth chattering.
If Pei Yan could be this ruthless with himself, what mercy would he show others?
In the original novel, when he later seized power, he flayed, disemboweled, and ground to dust everyone who had wronged him. Those descriptions now flashed through Chu Mingzhao’s mind like a lantern show on repeat.
“Miss? What’s wrong? Your face is so pale. Did you catch a chill?”
Seeing her mistress’s ashen face, Cuizhu stepped forward to feel her forehead.
“I’m fine.”
Chu Mingzhao brushed Cuizhu’s hand aside, took a deep breath, and forced herself to calm down.
If it were an ordinary person, such an ordeal would either kill them or leave them half-dead. Even if Pei Yan had a hard life, a bad cold was inevitable.
If he fell ill, who would bear the blame?
It would fall on her, Chu Mingzhao, the culprit!
At that thought, cold sweat broke out on Chu Mingzhao’s back.
“Quick, go to the storeroom and pick out two thickest silk-floss quilts. Also, get a hand warmer, fill it with boiling water, and take it to that stable hand. And bring that basket of silver-thread charcoal from my room too.”
Cuizhu stood frozen, her mouth wide enough to swallow an egg.
“Mi-miss? You mean to...”
“Just do as I say! What’s with all the chatter!”
Chu Mingzhao quickly slipped into the professional demeanor of a villainous female side character, arching her brows and letting out a cold snort.
“I just taught him a lesson, and I won’t let him die so easily. That beast can only die by my hand, never by illness.”
This far-fetched, vicious speech fit the original character perfectly.
Cuizhu suddenly understood, nodded repeatedly, spun around, and rushed off to prepare.
After two incense sticks’ worth of time.
Cuizhu returned with a box, trembling and fearful, to report back.
“He accepted them?”
Chu Mingzhao lounged on the soft couch, asking casually.
“No... no.”
Cuizhu stammered, her head nearly dropping to her chest. “He didn’t even look. Just told me to toss them by the hay trough. He also said... anything from the chancellor’s mansion is too dirty for him.”
Chu Mingzhao rubbed her throbbing temples.
This stubborn bastard’s pride was harder than a rock in a latrine pit.
Relying on others was useless. She had made this mess, and tears or not, she had to clean it up herself.
This life was truly unbearable.
Chu Mingzhao picked up the silk-wrapped hand warmer and tucked it into her embrace, then threw on a fur-lined cloak.
“Bring the charcoal brazier and follow me. I’ll deliver it in person and see if he still dares to be so ungrateful.”
With the quivering Cuizhu in tow, Chu Mingzhao stepped back into the stable.
The courtyard was a wreck.
Several empty wooden buckets lay scattered on the ground, and a thick layer of icicles had formed around the water trough.
Pei Yan was sitting slumped against the post by the hay trough.
His thin clothes were frozen stiff, clinging to his body.
His ethereally cold, handsome face was as pale as paper, and even the red mole at the corner of his eye had lost its luster. His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling so weakly it was almost imperceptible.
Chu Mingzhao’s heart leaped violently, and a chill crawled up her spine.
Had this stubborn bastard actually frozen himself to death?
She strode over the threshold in three quick steps, her skirt brushing against the broken ice on the ground with a crisp rustle.
Hearing the footsteps, Pei Yan slowly lifted his eyelids.
He looked at the returning Chu Mingzhao, the corners of his chapped lips curling into a mocking sneer.
“Eldest Miss... have you come to see if I’m dead yet?”
Chu Mingzhao steeled herself and stepped forward, looking down at him with a cold snort. “You wish. I haven’t tired of tormenting you yet. Do you think I’d let you die so easily?”
Pei Yan’s throat bobbed. He tried to let out a cold laugh, but a surge of phlegm rushed up from his chest.
He coughed violently, his thin back arching. Icicles fell from the tips of his hair, mixed with blood from the corners of his lips, splattering onto the filthy edge of the trough.
He tried to force himself upright, but his knees went completely weak the moment he put weight on them.
“Hey!”
Chu Mingzhao was so frightened her soul nearly left her body. She stumbled back two steps, watching helplessly as Pei Yan crashed heavily to the ground, splashing up a small bit of muddy water.
The dragon-clad protagonist had truly fallen.
