Real Empress from a Noble Family

Chapter 1 You Are Heading for Your Own Doom

Snow was flying on the Mount Dizi in the deep winter.

In the afternoon, Qiu Yelan was trudging on the path to the top of the mountain.

It snowed heavily, and the wind was blowing violently from the top of the mountain. Although she took off her fur coat to move more easily, she still had difficulties in struggling forward.

“Cousin, cousin! Let me go! Let me go!” With hands and feet tightly tied by the soaked twine, Kang Jinzhang was dragged in the snow by her with a rope. His tears and snots were condensed into ice, and he was begging in horror, “It is that Yue Zhi seduced me! Believe me! Believe me… I am your cousin, and we are related!”

“So now you have remembered that you are my cousin?” Qiu Yelan stopped. She wiped the snow on her face and turned her head, looking at Kang Jinzhang with a faint smile. Her voice was cold, “When you sneaked into my room at that midnight, why didn’t you think about it? Yue Zhi just suffered for me. Do you think that I don’t know who your real target was at that night?”

Kang Jinzhang was startled, “You know?!”

“I had to go out that night, so I let Yue Zhi sleep on my bed to take my place. But I didn’t expect that it would hurt her…” Qiu Yelan smiled slightly, and her smile was as beautiful as the plum blossom. But then she heaved the rope without hesitation and kept climbing.

“That night… I drank too much that night! Really!” Kang Jinzhang vaguely remembered that at the end of this road was a cliff. He was so frightened and begged incoherently, “Cousin, listen to me! Yue Zhi is just a servant girl. And grandma loves me the most. As long as you release me this time, I can give you many servant girls better than her! I will find ten for you, no, one hundred!”

Seeing Qiu Yelan was indifferent, he hurriedly said, “Cousin, do you know? There’s something wrong with the marriage that grandma let First Uncle manage for you.” Suddenly, Qiu Yelan’s action accelerated, and Kang Jinzhang exclaimed, “Although Deng Yi is the nephew of Duke of Guangyang and he is tall and handsome, he only loves men! He has no interest in girls! As long as you let me go, I’ll ask grandmother to dissolve the engagement for you!”

“General Ruan has become incurably ill, and he is your grandfather! If you kill me, you won’t be able to hide it from grandmother, as well as the fact that you secretly followed General Ruan to study martial arts would also be exposed! Do you want General Ruan’s last period of time being so unpeaceful?” Kang Jinzhang said earnestly, trying his best to think about his words, “And my Second Aunt — your mother is also not well. This time she sent you here to look for me, and isn’t it just to let you please grandma? You… Aren’t you afraid that grandma would let your mother pay for my life with her life?!”

Qiu Yelan let him down again. Smiling at him, she leaned down and gave him two slaps!

“Go on. I am listening. Let’s see whether you can make me let you off.” She dragged Kang Jinzhang forward again but said leisurely.

Kang Jinzhang looked at the cliff getting closer and closer, horrified to death, “There is a secret. If you kill me, you will never know it in this life!”

“Oh?” Qiu Yelan laughed while dragging, “What’s the secret?”

“About your brother’s death!” As soon as he said this, he was put down.

Kang Jinzhang breathed a sigh of relief in his heart and then quickly said, “Your brother was not dead because of you at all! I heard in my ears that he was killed by our family!” For fear of Qiu Yelan changing her mind, he hurriedly said in one breath, “It is just shortly after the news of your father’s death coming back, your brother died, and at that time you just got your first birthday, Grandma thinks that it is because of you that your father and your brother died, so she always hates you.”

“So what?” Qiu Yelan ran her fingers through her hair and smiled at Kang Jinzhang, but a faint one. “You know it, but you didn’t speak it out. After so many years, what evidence can there be? What’s the matter if I know it or not?”

“There is the evidence! There is the evidence!” Kang Jinzhang was anxious, “I can testify to you! I heard it myself! Grandma will believe me! You know she loves me the most!”

Qiu Yelan gave him a pitying glance and sighed, “But it’s useless! He is dead, and he can’t be alive again even if I find out the murderer.”

After she finished talking, she continued to drag him up the mountain.

Seeing that it was not far from the cliff, Kang Jinzhang struggled on the snow and wept bitterly, “Cousin… no! Cousin, please let me go! Please, please! I will never dare to play tricks on you again! I will never dare to egg grandma on to make troubles for you! As long as you let me off, I will do whatever you want me to do! I beg you! We are cousins! We are the brother and sister!”

Qiu Yelan was thinking carefully about it.

Kang Jinzhang was like catching a life-saving straw, “Cousin, you say! You just say it! Isn’t that First Aunt always bullying you? When I go back, I can ask grandma to take her…”

“The antidote of the poison Youmianxiang, do you have it?” Qiu Yelan asked softly, “If you have, I will send you down the mountain immediately!”

“The poison Youmianxiang?” Kang Jinzhang was extremely surprised, “The poison Youmianxiang has no antidote… No! Cousin, it really doesn’t have any antidote! I can surely do it for you if you give me another order…”

Qiu Yelan chuckled and said, “Don’t bother. Didn’t you mention that General Ruan and your Second Aunt are all at death’s door from illness? It is because that they were all poisoned by Madame Lu, your dear grandmother, with the poison Youmianxiang! Otherwise, why would I follow your Second Aunt’s words to go here after knowing you want to misbehave while you egg Madame Lu on to send me into this mountain?”

“Did you think I would have the antidote of the poison Youmianxiang?” Kang Jinzhang was so compunctious that he was almost about to hit the ground, and he yelled hurriedly, “Wait! It hit me that grandma seemed to have let me take over a box, and she seemed to have said that it is related to the poison Youmianxiang…”

“I never expect to get the antidote from you.” Qiu Yelan smiled and broke his hope. She dragged him to the cliff and said lightly, “Don’t expect my mother to pay for your life. Do you know why?”

Kang Jinzhang felt half of his body outside the cliff and half of him inside. He was so frightened that his heart was almost broken, and he asked subconsciously, “Why?”

“Because the mother of this body should have died of poisoning a few days ago.” Qiu Yelan looked at him with a smile, “She asked her daughter to come here before taking the poison. What she liked here were just the deep snow, the high mountains, and the dense forest. It was secluded, and it would be easy for her daughter to get away!”

As she pushed Kang Jinzhang out of the cliff, she smiled and said what Kang Jinzhang couldn’t understand, “In order to let her daughter safely leave Qiu Family, although this body’s mother could still live for half a year, she would rather kill herself in advance… I have taken over the daughter’s body now, and if I don’t do anything for them, I would be very sorry. Don’t you think so?”

“Ah‒!!!!”

“You will not die originally. But with such a shout, it will become more terrible for you to be buried alive!” A moment later, in the sound of avalanche, Qiu Yelan hid in a cave near the cliff and sighed, “In fact, I did not think of making you dead from falling. I just wanted you to be frozen for a while, and I would ask you questions then…”