Chapter 3: Accepting Reality

  Before Sun and Xue Qi could react, Gu Shuang took a deep breath, cleared her throat, and said softly: "Your Highness, please change into your festive attire. We will be entering the city immediately."

  In the midst of Sun's and Xue Qi's stunned gazes, Gu Shuang pinched her neck with one hand and winked at Sun a few times. The voice that came out was as gentle and soft as when Liang Chen heard the Ninth Princess's voice before - sweet but not overly so, exuding an air of innate nobility.

  "Yes, I'll help Your Majesty get dressed."

  "Your Highness has put on her wedding dress, and I, your humble servant, will now style your hair."

  "The slave girl is doing makeup for Her Highness the Princess."

  Sun Auntie put away the shock on her face, lowered her eyes, and secretly remembered Gu Xue's cleverness in her heart. With her intelligent and wise service by the side of Ninth Princess, she could also be at ease.

  Xue Xi has a simple personality, and it's inevitable that she's not thorough in handling matters. Gu Shuang is quiet and rarely speaks, making it easy for people to forget her existence. However, at critical moments, she can exert her strength. The two maids, one cold and one hot, one bright and one dark, will be the closest attendants to the Ninth Princess in the future. We must not let the Night Country take them away from the princess's side.

  Your Highness's painstaking arrangements are all for Princess Your Highness, even if she risks her own life, she must protect Princess Your Highness completely.

  "Move more quickly."

  Phoenix outside, not a word less, the four people's conversation was heard in his ears. Liang Chen frowned and couldn't say what was strange about it. He cast a glance at Mingjun Hou and walked slowly with his head down.

  "What should we do now?" Xue Ci grabbed the hand of Jiu Gongzhu, her eyes reddening with anxiety, and looked at Gu Shuang, whispering: "Do you have another way?"

  "If the princess still hasn't woken up after entering the city, then directly meet with the war king and inform him that the princess is unwell and has fainted. In any case, the ninth princess has already traveled from the southern country to the night country, and it's not impossible for her to suddenly fall ill due to exhaustion. Even if a royal physician were to be summoned for treatment, they could only say that the princess's body is weak, and there would be no grounds for punishment."

  At this time, Sun couldn't help but thank the Southern Emperor. His approach was indeed more clever than others, at least leaving the princess with a little room to prepare and choose.

  "Let's just do it then."

  Two maidservants, under the command of Sun Shangshu, quickly and skillfully helped Yixin change into a magnificent red wedding dress. Xue Qi's deft hands soon transformed Yixin's pale face, devoid of any hint of color, into a flawless and delicate complexion that was both pure and alluring.

  Actually, Yixin Ran was born with a stunning beauty that could overthrow cities and nations. She was radiant and captivating, and didn't need much deliberate makeup. With just a bit of adornment, she became extremely beautiful. Especially her eyes, which were clear and cold, yet seemed to hold a hint of warmth. Every time she blinked, it would make the hearts of men in this world skip a beat.

  Alas, now those eyes are tightly closed, the long eyelashes curled up, casting inch by inch shadows on the eyelids.

  Inside the brocade city, the loud shouts of the people came and went, "Welcome to the princess, welcome to the princess..." Ling Xue carefully lifted the curtain, her eyes scanning over the crowd of people kneeling on the ground, her eyebrows furrowed in unison, couldn't help but sigh, if the princess was awake, seeing such a scene, what would she think.

  "Madam, the welcoming procession led by His Majesty the War King is just ahead."

  As soon as the words fell, she picked up the phoenix coronet and gently placed it on Yixin's head. Finally, Sun Shisan covered her face with a veil, hiding that stunning beauty.

  "Welcome Her Royal Highness..."

  From the city gate inwards, the long streets were filled with kneeling citizens of Night Country, joyful congratulatory voices echoing endlessly, like a loud bell ringing in one's ears.

  Perhaps the loud cries of the people were so great that they awakened Yixin, who had fainted, from her stupor. Her phoenix eyes lightly opened, and what entered her line of sight was still the bright red wedding veil she saw when she first woke up, as well as the bright red wedding dress on her body.

  Forced a wry smile, and couldn't help but feel a pang of sorrow in his heart.

  She became the biggest joke at the engagement ceremony of a prosperous age.

  Her unmarried husband's mistress was pregnant, shouting at her and throwing a high-heeled cup. For some reason, she crossed into another world and was reborn as an unpopular princess in a arranged marriage.

  Before she fainted, those memories that didn't belong to her flooded into her mind like a flood, and it was ridiculous that she had an illusion of empathy.

  Recalling how she was married off to the Night Country, Yixin couldn't help but shed a sympathetic tear for the late Ninth Princess. On that day, Nan Huang entered her chambers for the first time in ten years, only to tell her to prepare herself, as she would be marrying into the Night Country through an arranged marriage, with no room for negotiation.

  She was allowed to kneel outside the Jinque Hall for three days and three nights, exposed to wind and sun.

  On the fourth night, she finally chose to end her life in an extreme way. She didn't want to leave with the Night Country and be separated from her brother who relied on each other for survival. Since she couldn't stay, if she died, she wouldn't have to marry into the Night Country far away, and her father would no longer have any leverage to threaten her brother.

  A long sword lightly swept across the slender neck, blood flowing like a pillar, as if lamenting the injustice of heaven.

  That night, the entire Southern Kingdom's imperial palace was shaken. The Southern Emperor spared no effort to save this chess piece, using sacred medicine and healing the wound on her neck to leave not a single trace. However, after that night, Ninth Princess Yixin never appeared in front of anyone again. To the outside world, the Southern Emperor announced that Ninth Princess was unwell. It wasn't until the Night Kingdom's envoy for the royal wedding entered the palace that Imperial Concubine Hui's personal maid took Ninth Princess's place and ascended to the Golden Hall, bidding farewell to the Southern Emperor, accepting the imperial seal, while the real Ninth Princess had long been lying inside the imperial palanquin, seamlessly following the Night Kingdom's envoy to the Night Kingdom for the royal wedding.

  To be on the safe side, Nan Huang gave Yixin a strange medicine that would not affect her body and would not allow the imperial physician to detect anything unusual, letting her sleep soundly until nightfall in the capital of the Night Country, it was truly a matter of timing.

  Her fingertips dug deep into her flesh, and the naturally cheerful Yixin whispered to herself: "From now on, you are Princess Yixin of the Southern Kingdom. If you're going to marry someone, then just do it."

  Daddy and Mommy think Dongfang Wu is a good man, but in fact, he's a scumbag who only knows how to flirt and then abandon. Rather than marrying that insincere bad guy, it's better to take a chance and see if I can marry a good man now.

  A highly adaptable woman, carelessly discarding those complicated things, has already left the southern country and will never return; while the nocturnal country will be where she starts her new life, and as long as she obediently serves as the war king's consort, she'll have a worry-free life of food and clothing for the rest of her days, which isn't too bad.

  Perhaps she's dead and can go back then.

  But letting her die by herself or committing suicide was too cruel a thing for her to do, so she had no choice but to take the last way out.

  Waiting for natural death won't be very painful.

  "Your Highness, are you awake?"

  "Uh..." was discovered.

  "Princess..."

  "Wow, it's really lively outside, I'd love to take a look." As she spoke, Yixin was about to remove the veil from her head. What century is this that married women still have to wear veils? How rustic and old-fashioned.

  "Cannot pluck." Sun Shuniang quickly pressed down on Yixin's hand, saying seriously: "Your Highness must pay attention to her demeanor and not be rude."

  She opened her mouth and said with a hint of disdain in her heart, "What etiquette? I've hated etiquette classes the most since I was little."

  It is said that when under someone else's roof, one must lower his head.

  She looked at the unfamiliar life here, the three of them were truly good to her, looking at the princess who died under the same name as Yixin Ran, and being in the same rank ninth as her, obediently not lifting the lid, not moving randomly.

  Since she was a child, her father and mother had always called her 'Little Princess, Little Treasure, Little Jiuer', and her brothers also called her 'Jiuer'. She was the veritable Ninth Princess of the family. Who would have thought that one day, after an accidental transmigration, she actually became the Ninth Princess of a southern kingdom.

  Is it that in the midst of all this, everything has its own destiny, she...

  Just as Yixin was lost in thought, the carriage stopped and Sun Shang got out. Xue Ju and Sun Shuang supported her on either side as she slowly got down from the carriage. Before she could lift her head, a slender, jade-like hand with pale pink fingernails appeared before her face, without making any sound.

  Yi Xinxian's eyes lost their luster for the first time as she gazed at a man's hands, feeling an inexplicable pang of jealousy. If these hands were used to play the piano, how perfect it would be.

  Under the red canopy, Yixin couldn't help but shiver as she suddenly felt a chill, despite the clear and sunny weather.

  Her piercing and icy gaze was fixed on the petite figure in front of her, her low voice like a hundred-year-old sweet wine, emitting a strong aroma, "Princess, please."

  Her body was tense, forming a straight line, and she felt like she might snap at any moment. Yixin couldn't understand why she hadn't been nervous when she was engaged to Dongfang Wu, but now she was so tense that her legs wouldn't even listen to her.

  Her watery eyes looked at the big hand that had never been withdrawn, and her small white hand finally stopped hesitating, gently placing it in his thick palm. Suddenly, she found that her hand was really small.

  His hands were very large and warm.

  When he held her small hand tightly, it miraculously soothed her unease and tension, as if she would be very safe just by standing beside him.

  Many years later, Yixin would recall this day and couldn't help but sigh, 'Perhaps she was just infatuated with his warmth, accustomed to relying on him'.