Li Chenglu quickly shifted his gaze away from Pei Cijing.
Even though the man had a handsome face, clear brows, and a clean aura, standing out with a rare refreshing naturalness among a hall full of young lords deliberately showing off their elegance.
But—no.
Absolutely out of the question!
Li Chenglu was resolute in his heart.
His younger sister, Chanying, was a clever and brilliant girl. How could she be matched with a prince consort who looked a bit dim-witted? In the future, the intelligence of his nieces and nephews would depend half on their father!
This point.
Was absolutely crucial!
He couldn't possibly find his sister a husband who would drag down the intelligence of their descendants.
Thinking this way.
Li Chenglu turned his gaze to the other side where several young nobles were composing poetry and speaking eloquently. He gave a slight nod. This was more like it. However, just as he prepared to observe their character and speech more carefully, a familiar, sharp, gripping pain suddenly struck his lower abdomen without any warning!
The pain came swiftly, like an icy awl piercing fiercely into him, instantly snatching away his breath.
Li Chenglu's face abruptly turned pale. His already fair complexion became almost transparent, and fine beads of cold sweat broke out on his forehead. The fingertips gripping his folding fan turned white from the force, his knuckles popping.
He forcibly endured it to avoid crying out and losing his composure, but his slightly curling body and momentarily unfocused eyes still betrayed his current agony.
"Your Highness!" Fu'an, the chief eunuch attending by his side, changed his expression. He took a half step forward, his voice kept extremely low, carrying an imperceptible panic. "Is it... again?"
Biting his lower lip, Li Chenglu gave a barely noticeable nod.
Fu'an moved with extreme speed. A delicate suet jade bottle slipped from his sleeve. He pulled the stopper and poured out a dark, glossy pill the size of a longan, swiftly bringing it to Li Chenglu's lips.
Guided by Fu'an's hand, Li Chenglu took the pill into his mouth and managed to swallow it down.
As the pill slid down his throat, a warm medicinal efficacy gradually dissolved, traveling along his meridians, slowly suppressing and dispelling the raging coldness and gripping pain.
After about the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea.
A bit of color slowly returned to Li Chenglu's face, and his tightly furrowed brows gradually relaxed. However, a trace of lingering exhaustion and... a faint bitterness remained in his eyes.
He sat up straight again, picked up the slightly cold teacup by his hand, and took a shallow sip to cover up his previous loss of composure. Yet, his heart was filled with coldness and helplessness.
It was here again!
Here again!!
Ever since he was thirteen, he had to go through this once every month.
Extremely regular, yet always catching him off guard.
At first, it was just a slight, dull ache that he could endure. But over the past two years, it had become more and more intense. Sometimes it hurt so much that his vision went dark, and he nearly fainted.
As a prince, whenever he was unwell, imperial physicians would naturally come to diagnose him.
But it was useless!
That bunch of old men in the Imperial Hospital had taken turns checking his pulse long ago, thoroughly examining him with all their methods, and the prescriptions they wrote could fill half a study.
Yet, whenever he asked about the cause.
They would either hem and haw, speaking vaguely, or spout some generic nonsense like "congenital deficiency," "liver stagnation," or "cold invading the body." The medicine they prescribed could only barely suppress the agony during an episode, giving him a brief respite, but it could never cure the root of the problem.
Every month, he had to be tormented by this inexplicable pain.
Like a curse he couldn't shake off.
Li Chenglu even began to dread the arrival of those few days every month. This sense of powerlessness over his own body bred a deep-seated frustration and gloom in his heart.
He was a dignified prince!
Noble and precious!
Yet he couldn't even cure a stomachache. If word got out, it would be an absolute joke!
But this joke.
Just happened to be real.
Li Chenglu lowered his eyes, his thick, long eyelashes casting two shadows under his eyes, hiding the complex emotions surging within them. He set down the teacup, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing the smooth wall of the cup, trying to pull his attention back to the flower-viewing banquet before him.
He was here to choose a prince consort for his sister; he couldn't let his own discomfort delay official business.
...
Inside the waterside pavilion, the floating wine cups along the winding stream continued.
Glazed cups carried amber wine.
They drifted unhurriedly along the meandering waterway. Occasionally, a young master would reach out to take a cup and recite a poem, drawing a chorus of agreement and praise. The autumn sun spilled in through the carved window lattices, cutting out interlacing spots of light and shadow on the blue brick floor. The air was filled with the scent of osmanthus, the aroma of wine, and a certain unspoken tension.
In the corner, Pei Cijing was fully concentrated on dealing with the last piece of crystal osmanthus cake on his plate, but if one looked closely, they could see his gaze was somewhat drifting.
His mind was entirely filled with the figure of the Ninth Prince.
Pei Cijing did not consider himself someone who would pine over a man. In both his past life and this one, he only liked soft, sweet-smelling girls—just like his own wife.
But this Ninth Prince...
Just made him feel that something was off.
Very off!
That overall bearing, that walking posture, that charm flowing in his eyes when he spoke... and that almost fragile, delicate beauty when his abdominal pain flared up just now.
How did this look like a prince?
It was clearly...
Pei Cijing stopped chewing.
He raised his eyes to steal a glance.
The Ninth Prince Li Chenglu's face had abruptly lost its color from the pain, those slightly upturned eyes now misted over, that figure as thin as paper, looking as if it would snap at a fold... After taking the pill, his pale complexion recovered, yet an undissipated agony and a trace of... indescribable weariness lingered between his brows.
Others might just think the Ninth Prince suddenly felt unwell.
And took a standard pill.
But he saw it clearly—when Li Chenglu's abdominal pain flared up, his fingers subconsciously pressed against his lower abdomen, and his body curled up slightly. That posture, that expression...
It was too familiar.
When a woman's time of the month came and the reaction was severe, it was exactly this kind of demeanor!
But Li Chenglu was a prince.
How could a prince...
Pei Cijing's gaze secretly moved up again, landing on Li Chenglu, sweeping over him inch by inch like the most precise scanner—
His figure was more petite than an ordinary sixteen or seventeen-year-old boy, with a delicate bone structure.
His face was white, so white it was almost transparent; under the autumn sun, one could even see the faint blue veins beneath his skin.
His lip color was very light, a natural cherry pink that was red without any rouge.
And...
Pei Cijing's gaze locked onto Li Chenglu's neck. The standing collar of his brocade robe was very high, almost covering more than half of his neck, revealing only a small section of fair skin.
There was no Adam's apple.
Not a single bump.
Pei Cijing's heartbeat suddenly skipped a beat.
He remembered the way Li Chenglu looked when his abdominal pain flared up just now—a deathly pale face, cold sweat pouring down, fingers pressing desperately against his lower abdomen, that agony, that forbearance...
That was definitely that time of the month!
Once this thought emerged, it grew wildly like weeds and could no longer be suppressed.
Pei Cijing felt like he had discovered a blind spot!
A massive blind spot capable of overturning everyone's perception!
Could this Ninth Prince...
Actually be a princess?
Not referring to his twin sister, Princess Anhe, Li Chanying, in disguise, but rather—he himself was a woman!
But how could that be possible?
When a royal heir is born, there must be midwives, imperial physicians, and officials from the Imperial Clan Court present to verify the gender and record it on file. It was absolutely impossible for a mistake to occur.
Unless...
A memory flashed through Pei Cijing's mind: a rare medical condition she had coincidentally learned about while auditing classes at a medical school in her previous life.
Congenital pseudohermaphroditism.
A patient's exterior might present male or female characteristics, yet their internal reproductive organs and chromosomes could completely contradict their outward appearance.
In ancient times, medical knowledge was highly limited. Midwives delivering babies relied solely on the naked eye to determine a newborn's sex. If a baby's external genitalia were ambiguous...
The possibility of a misidentification.
It absolutely existed!
And if such a mistake had truly occurred, and the one misidentified was a prince...
Pei Cijing drew in a sharp breath!
