That day, she knelt down on her bed and faced the direction of the grave, wailing loudly.

  As the place gradually became blurred and then gradually clear, a dimly lit house appeared, with only a simple table and grass mat. A woman in tattered clothes was kneeling on the grass mat, her posture upright and elegant. At this moment, she stared blankly ahead, lost in thought.

  Until the door was pushed open with a loud noise, breaking the silence in the room. A woman wearing palace attire walked over with a bowl of rice topped with a few leaves of vegetables and slammed it onto the table, "Dinner's ready!"

  The woman remained unmoved. The palace maid shot her a glance, sneering thinly, "What kind of empress are you? You're not even as good as us cold palace maids!" After speaking, seeing the woman still had no reaction, she turned her face and left the room.

  After the palace maid left, the woman finally covered her mouth and started coughing violently. She stopped after a long time. She looked at the food on the table, picked up the bowl with her hand, and after a while, she habitually used her hand to grab some and stuff it into her mouth. She couldn't die yet, she had to survive, she wanted to tell Xi Rong that she was innocent, she had never done anything to harm the prince.

  The rice had just been stuffed into his mouth a few times, and the door was opened again. Jin Xiu's clothes reflected dazzling light, and she couldn't help but squint her eyes. After seeing the person who came in, she lowered her head and continued to eat the rice in the bowl.

  The woman walked in as if it were a usual thing, the hem of her skirt trailing on the ground, seeming to brighten up the whole room. Her gaze swept towards the person sitting at the table eating with concentration, and she smiled coyly, "I've brought you some good news, do you want to hear it?"

  She didn't even bother to respond to the woman, who waved her hand dismissively. A nearby palace maid had already brought out a delicate chair and placed it beside her. After sitting down, she continued with a smile, "Yesterday, your good servant girl was promoted from concubine to imperial concubine." Her tone suddenly turned sharp, "The people around you are indeed skilled in their ways, but that servant girl of yours didn't even think to speak up for you in front of the Third Prince. It seems you're just a person who's content with eating coarse rice and living in a broken-down house."

  As she said this, the woman glanced at the two palace maids beside her. The two of them tacitly understood and walked over to pin her down. She was used to it and didn't struggle. In the past, when she tried to struggle, it would only hurt more, and the woman in front of her would become even more frenzied, letting the palace maids humiliate her further.

  Before humiliating her, the woman stood up, looking down at her with a smile that hid disdain and something else indistinct. "I'll tell you one thing, I'm sure you'll be interested."

  "Do you know how your father died? This is also what I just found out recently. The evidence of your father's crime was secretly instructed by Sanlang to the imperial guards, with the intention of putting him to death." She took out a silk handkerchief and dabbed at the corner of her eye, "To say it, it's really heartbreaking, after all, they were also my uncle and aunt who had been with me for decades."

  She finally had some reaction and whispered, "You deceived me."

  The girl scratched her face with her fingernail, and her smile fell. "Am I deceiving you or not, you know it in your heart!"

  She wanted to get up, but was held down and couldn't move. She shouted, "You deceived me!" Then she muttered to herself, "He can't treat me like this, he said so, he said so..."

  What did he say? He seemed to have promised nothing, only once told her, "Xi Yu, I'll treat you well." He said he liked it when she called his name, Xu Rong... Xu Rong!

  This is what you call treating me well!! She suddenly started coughing violently, unable to stop, until she coughed up blood and still kept on coughing desperately, as if trying to cough out everything about him. Father, mother, sister... She was so angry, so angry!

  The child's death, the betrayal of her maid and the people in front of her, were no match for the hatred she felt at this moment. She gazed out the door at the sky, where the setting sun stained her eyes red like blood.