Three years ago at Nanjing, as well.
On the joyous day of Princess Jingan's wedding, she sat upright in her room. The maids combed her hair and applied her makeup. With them moving about, it was akin to a school of fish that was forever moving. The maid who combed her hair watched her grow up and loved her most. When she looked at Princess Jingan's demeanour with her head down, waiting to be married, the maid's was filled with joy and sweetness.
"You are finally getting married, Your Highness. His Majesty dotes on you the most among the three Princesses. Your fuma is said to be a man of the highest calibre who is talented in both literacy and martial arts. You truly are blessed with boundless fortune, Your Highness."
A low-ranking maid added, "My, I personally saw him. He fought seven men on his own, yet utterly defeated them without them having any chance of countering."
"Look at our Princess. She is blushing as soon as we mentioned marriage. She must be tired of our nonsense and eager to see Fuma. Fuma is opposite you. You will have plenty of time to spend with each other. There is no need to be hasty now."
"Don't make things up…" Princess Jingan's face was red. She thoughtlessly waved her hands around. She bashfully said, "Every girl has to get married when she grows up. Whoever father chooses for me would definitely be a good candidate. I don't have anything to say about it."
Princess Hongzhuang wore a gentle smile. Her soft snow white skin looked as if she had a layer of lotion applied to it, giving it an entrancing red tinge. The shyest new bride probably didn't feel as unsettled as her. However, at the top of her rosy cheeks was a pair of dark black eyes that gazed at the maids around. Her black eyes looked so profound and deep as though there was no telling where the end was, yet at the same time, exuded a cold and lonely vibe found in the sky late at night in cemeteries. She looked at the maids' gazes. She gazed at them as though she was scanning some sort of unmoving, lifeless flower that was a waste of time to gaze at. Or perhaps more accurately, she gazed at them as if they were corpses.
From Jingan's viewpoint, the maids were no different to the dead.
Fuma Jingan, Ming Feizhen, was currently in the opposite make-up room getting ready as she was. He changed into his clothes as the groom. As a fuma essentially marries into the bride's family, she would still rank higher than him after marriage. As a result, even though he was marrying her, he had to move into her manor.
Jingan considered him, Fuma Jingan, a corpse as she did with everyone else.
From the very beginning, Jingan's was determined to recruit Mount Daluo's skilled martial artists; however, she was unable to find out anything from two Mount Daluo disciples she once captured. What she wanted to know was probably only something the patriarch of Mount Daluo would be able to tell her.
Thus, Jingan commanded skilled martial artists to search for Mount Daluo's patriarch, Ming Huayu. When she found out he came to the capital, she arranged a fated encountered between the two. With her beauty that was able to take down cities, Ming Huayu immediately fell for her and couldn't escape.
Then she pretended to accidentally reveal her esteemed identity through her father's Imperial Martial Arts Tournament. The plan was to have Ming Huayu win the tournament to marry her, achieving her goal of the talented couple coming together. From there, she planned to use him to obtain something specific. Unfortunately, a man of unknown origins threw a wrench in her plans. The man who came to the palace to receive his reward the day after Ming Huayu's triumph was another man.
Jingan was aware that Ming Huayu was in disguise from the moment they met. So accordingly, she saw through Ming Feizhen's disguise not long after meeting him. She decided to kill him thereafter, a decision which she made at the snap of a finger.
Seducing Ming Huayu was a risky manoeuvre, but she did it, nonetheless, to enact a secret plan. Owing to Ming Huayu's departure, she had to take action and invest immense effort to turn the tides. Killing Ming Feizhen was the action.
From a young age, she had big plans in mind, all of which were on a scale that no ordinary man could comprehend. Let us use her marriage as an example. Normal girls emphasised mutual feelings; however, such sentiments and even sharing similar status in the social hierarchy were insignificant matters to her.
Her fuma was just outside the door. She silently sat there as she waited for her make-up to be done. The number one beauty in the capital had already made up her mind to kill everyone present. That was the only way that the "A formidable enemy seeks revenge on Fuma. The Princess' Manor is drowned in a sea of fire," play could go on as scheduled. Once news of the incident were to spread, Ming Huayu would immediately return to the capital for his disciple and to find out the truth. That would provide her with a second chance to approach Mount Daluo's patriarch.
JIngan didn't enjoy killing nor was she a cruel and violent individual. In saying that, she didn't inherit her father's kind nature. She was unlike her father, brothers, sisters and even her mother. That was her innate nature; she was a woman who lacked joy and sadness, emotions that normal people experienced. She didn't smile or cry ever since she turned five.
Jingan's mother passed away as soon as she was conceived. Her father was busy with national affairs and didn't bother with her. The only hobby she had was reading in her room. Be it day or night, she always read books. Whenever she was tired from reading, she would sit at the window ledge and space out while peering at the sky.
Due to her not crying or smiling, always wearing the same expression, as well as not being fond of speaking, she just kept her head down and read books. Maids, eunuchs and even the concubine who raised her gradually developed a fear for her. Her biological mother passed away when she was an infant. The highest-ranking Imperial Concubine, who raised her, wasn't favoured by the Emperor from a young age. She originally intended to raise the eldest Princess to win the Emperor's favour, but to her dismay, the Princess was a nerd.
Try as she may, the concubine couldn't get Jingan's attention. At one point, she questioned if Jingan was mute. Afterwards, she recalled that while she read out loud during her lessons with her teacher, she was able to speak. Hence, the concubine realised that Jingan deliberately ignored her!
The concubine and Jingan's biological mother had a grudge between them when her late mother was still alive. Her thoughts side-tracked, and she thundered, "Your mother is His Majesty's cousin, a Royal Princess. Your mother was Empress Dowager's granddaughter, and you're her grandniece, so you hold status without equal. Is that why you think nothing of anyone? So what if your family background is prestigious? Your mother is dead; you reside in my palace. If I want to starve you to death, see if anyone feeds you!"
The concubine in question was not one for convoluted schemes, but was very brash and had a tendency to be jealous. With her character and the loneliness in the palace, she had accumulated a mass of jealousy and resentment over time without her being aware. Logically speaking, due to JIngan's biological mother having passed away years ago, it was impossible for Jingan's mother to threaten her standing in the Emperor's heart. Nonetheless, she stubbornly projected the grudge between Jingan's mother and herself onto Jingan.
After that, the concubine locked Jingan in a dark room and didn't feed her for several days consecutively. Had she not been afraid of getting in trouble with the Emperor if Jingan actually died, she, without a shadow of doubt, would've starved the Princess to death given her brash temperament. She once closed the doors to her room, stripped Jingan down and brutally whipped Jingan with a rattan rope, leaving cruel bloody marks on the Jingan's soft skin.
By the age of six, Jingan was able to remember the contents of over a hundred books. She would prostrate her snow white body on the ground, but not say a word or cry, "It hurts." She'd just coldly look at the concubine.
The concubine once remarked that Jingan's gaze was not the gaze of a child, but that of a devil's reincarnation. Noticing that the young girl's body still look stunning despite her bleeding, the concubine subconsciously recalled her beautiful late mother. She, thereby, developed jealousy towards Jingan and said to herself, "A vixen sure does give birth to another vixen!"
Furious, the concubine thundered, "You want to be tough? Let's see how long you can be tough for!"
The concubine wanted to get a few men to destroy the girls' chastity so that the girl would fear her and remain loyal to her for eternity. Alas, the palace was a strict place. Besides the Empress, only the most favoured concubines would likely be able to bring people from outside in. The realisation further added fuel to her fire. She, therefore, wanted to find some strong females in the palace to torture Jingan daily as she awaited the day she'd find a guard in the palace who would obey her and carry out the villainous crime.
Approximately a month after the Concubine had the idea, Jingan had yet to turn seven, but the Concubine… suddenly jumped down a well in the name of committing suicide.
Glossary
*The first part of the title comes from the line "岁月静好，现世安稳 " which can be translated slightly differently in another context. The line was written as an oath from Hu Lancheng to Zhang Ailing when they got married.