Flower Stealing Master

Chapter 1110: Sacrificing Reputation

A slender, graceful figure stepped in front of Song Qingshu. Her bearing was elegant and unhurried. Seen from behind, the skin at her neck was white as snow with a faint blush of warmth beneath it — the kind of delicate complexion that looked as though it could bruise at a touch.

When Li Kexiu saw her face, the color drained from his. He threw up a hand at his archers. “Hold! Hold your fire!” Then he wheeled on the girl, fury overriding everything else: “Yuanzhi — stop this nonsense. Step aside!”

The girl was Li Yuanzhi — whom Song Qingshu had not seen in a very long time.

“I am not making nonsense!” Li Yuanzhi bit her lip, tears glimmering in her eyes. “Brother Song saved your life, Father. He has saved mine more times than I can count. How can you repay all of that with this?”

She had been confined to the military compound at Li Kexiu’s insistence — unable to leave from the moment the Jin and Qing envoys had arrived. Even after they departed and Li Kexiu returned to his residence, she had been kept behind. But Li Yuanzhi’s nature was not the kind that submits quietly to confinement. With her father gone, who in that camp was going to hold her? 

The soldiers were hardly going to manhandle the Commander’s own daughter. Boredom had lasted about as long as it ever did with her.

The moment word reached her that the Golden Serpent King Song Qingshu was a guest at the residence, she had gone over the compound wall and come running — expecting a reunion and finding an execution instead. She had not stopped to think. She had simply put herself between them.

To be publicly dressed down by his own daughter in front of all these people — Li Kexiu’s expression went thunderous.

Song Qingshu let out a quiet sigh. “Little sister Yuanzhi. I never imagined our reunion would come like this.”

Li Yuanzhi’s eyes stung. Her voice came out uneven: “It’s my fault. If I had come sooner, none of this would have happened.”

Song Qingshu smiled with more ease than he felt. “What is meant to come finds its way. You can’t blame yourself.”

The composure of it made things worse somehow. Li Yuanzhi’s throat tightened. “Brother Song—”

She was already moving toward him when he stepped back quickly. “Don’t touch me. I’ve been poisoned by the Heavenly Devil Flower — I’m afraid of passing it to you.”

He was thinking of Ding Dian in The Blood Sword — how Ding Dian had become a carrier of the toxin through his whole body. What he didn’t know was that Ding Dian’s situation had come from pressing his face and hands against a coffin coated in the poison, weeping and embracing it for a prolonged period in his grief. Song Qingshu, protected by his sheathing layer of true qi, had not come into direct contact with the poison powder at all. Touching him would not have infected her. But he didn’t know this, and he stepped away.

“Poisoned?” Li Yuanzhi turned on her father. The look in her eyes said everything. “How could you.”

“Be quiet!” The public humiliation had gone on long enough. Li Kexiu’s composure finally cracked. “Someone come and escort the young lady back to her room.”

He had read the situation clearly enough: Song Qingshu and his daughter were evidently close, but a man of Song Qingshu’s character would never stoop to using a young woman as a hostage. He felt safe issuing the order.

When the servants moved toward her, Li Yuanzhi let out a sharp cry, her hand flying to the dagger at her waist. The blade came up and pressed against the pale column of her own throat. “Don’t come any closer.”

“You—!” Li Kexiu froze his people with a raised hand and stared at his daughter. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Song Qingshu’s brow furrowed. “Little sister Yuanzhi — I understand what you mean to do, and I am grateful. But please. Put the blade down. This is too dangerous.”

Whatever his faults in the direction of women, he had his own pride — and watching someone else take a risk on his behalf was not something he could simply accept. He knew what this gesture might accomplish. He still couldn’t bear to see her doing it.

“Bring the antidote for the Heavenly Devil Flower,” Li Yuanzhi said, her voice steady and clear, her slender frame trembling faintly in the night air. “Or I will die right here in front of you.”

“Don’t act rashly!” Li Kexiu’s love for his daughter overrode everything else. He looked instinctively to Wan Qili.

Wan Qili answered in a flat, cold voice: “The Heavenly Devil Flower has no antidote.” He watched Li Kexiu’s expression shift and pressed on before the man could waver: “We are past the point of turning back. Why does the Commissioner keep hesitating?”

Li Kexiu’s eyes steadied. He had spent a lifetime on campaign. He understood — finish what is started, or suffer for it later. He had made an enemy of Song Qingshu tonight. If that man recovered, Li Kexiu’s own ruin would follow.

“Yuanzhi.” His voice had gone quiet. “You heard it yourself. It isn’t that your father won’t provide an antidote. There is no antidote to provide.”

Li Yuanzhi was drawing breath to speak again when Song Qingshu confirmed it himself: “He is telling the truth, little sister. The Heavenly Devil Flower has no remedy.”

“You have so much capability, Brother Song — you’ll find a way, I know you will.” Tears were streaming freely down her face now. She turned to her father. “Father. I’m only asking you to let him go.”

“A daughter’s heart always turns outward!” Three times now she had stood against him in front of these people — Li Kexiu was simultaneously furious and shaken. “Your father and this Song person are at irreconcilable odds. If I don’t finish him tonight, tomorrow it will be your father who dies. Would you truly rather watch me die?”

“He wouldn’t — I know he wouldn’t.” Li Yuanzhi looked at Song Qingshu. “Tell him, Brother Song. Say something.”

Song Qingshu’s brow tightened. He did not speak. He let out a single heavy sound — not quite agreement, not quite refusal. To beg for his life at this moment, to bargain and plead — he could not. His life mattered, yes. But some things mattered as much as life.

“You see?” Li Kexiu let out a short, incredulous laugh. “He looks at you like that even now. What do you imagine he’ll do to your father once he’s recovered?”

“He won’t. He never would.” Something settled in Li Yuanzhi’s expression — the look of a person who has made a decision and will not unmake it. She lifted her chin and spoke each word with deliberate, unmistakable clarity:

“Because I have already pledged myself to him in secret. And I…I am carrying his child. How could he possibly raise a hand against his own father-in-law? Against his child’s grandfather?”

“What—”

Li Kexiu swayed on his feet. For a moment it seemed he might go down entirely.

Wan Qili and Wan Gui went equally pale. The entire foundation of their arrangement with Li Kexiu rested on delivering Li Yuanzhi to the Song imperial palace as Empress. A daughter who had secretly pledged herself to another man — and claimed to be with child — could never enter the inner palace.

“Yuanzhi…” Song Qingshu was genuinely stunned. He knew perfectly well that nothing of the kind had passed between them — she was fabricating it entirely to save him.

He also knew, perhaps better than anyone in that courtyard, what a woman’s reputation meant in this world. With so many people present, a single word spoken carelessly would follow Li Yuanzhi for the rest of her life. Finding a marriage after this — even in ordinary circumstances — would become far more difficult.

He was already forming the words to correct it when Li Yuanzhi, who had clearly anticipated this, cut him off. She spoke in a low voice meant only for him: “I know what you’re about to say, Brother Song. Please don’t let my good intentions go to waste. Tonight I am going to get you out of here. Whatever it takes.”

He looked at her — at the earnestness in her eyes, the crystalline simplicity of her thinking — and something in him gave way. He said nothing. He let the moment stand.

“My own daughter.” Li Kexiu pressed his hands to his face, the words coming out in a groan of pain and rage. When he looked up, his eyes were fixed on Song Qingshu with the kind of heat that would have ignited stone. “You miserable piece of shi—”