Chapter Ninety-Six: Causes and Consequences

“What?!” Guli was struck pale with shock. “How could this be? How could he be dying? Didn’t I save him that day? Did he get shot again in the end?”

“Don’t panic.” Seeing how frightened she was, her face drained of color and her frail body trembling uncontrollably, the Crown Prince hurried to soothe her, fearing she would not bear it. Only then did he relate the whole story from beginning to end.

The more Guli heard, the worse her face looked. Her wide eyes brimmed with tears, her lips quivered faintly, and her hands clenched the quilt so tightly that her heart ached until she could scarcely breathe.

“You mean... before he went to Wangyao Mountain, he first received a hundred strokes of military punishment, then personally begged permission to go there overnight, used his own blood to gather the Ten-Blood Flower for me, and afterward cut his own legs with a dagger for a full ten days, using his living blood as the medicine’s guide to save me?”

“Princess...” Jasmine, standing nearby, listened in terror and could hardly believe the truth was actually like this.

Everyone in the palace knew that the General of Chang'an had brought back a rare flower from Wangyao Mountain to save Princess Danqing, but no one knew that the real story was so tortuous.

To gather that strange flower from the sheer cliffs of Wangyao Mountain was already a venture from which one might not return alive, and yet the flower could only bloom with human blood. Most importantly, before he left, the General of Chang'an had already gone to the barracks and taken a hundred strokes of the military rod, believing it was his own failure that had caused the princess’s poisoning.

A hundred strokes. Jasmine did not even dare imagine it.

For ordinary people, thirty strokes could take half their life; fifty could beat palace maids and eunuchs to death. Let alone a hundred. Even a grown man who had long been tempered by hardship and trained in martial arts would struggle to endure such punishment.

Jasmine could imagine that after a hundred strokes, the General of Chang'an must already have been at death’s door.

And in that condition, he had still managed to travel all the way to the distant cliffs of Wangyao Mountain, gather the flower, and return.

He had even shortened a journey that would normally take no less than half a month there and back into only ten days, and somehow survived to bring back the Ten-Blood Flower.

Ten-Blood Flower.

Only by using ten days of the General of Chang'an’s living blood as the medicine’s guide had the princess been dragged back from the very hands of the King of Hell.

No wonder that when the empress had fed the princess her medicine before, Jasmine had thought she could faintly smell blood even from where she stood beside her. She had merely assumed it was the scent of the Ten-Blood Flower itself.

Jasmine could not imagine what suffering the General of Chang'an had endured. It was a process no ordinary person could possibly fathom. Even hearing of it made her chest tighten with pain, and perhaps the truth was far more brutal than anything they knew.

After all, on those cliffs of Wangyao Mountain, how had the grievously wounded General of Chang'an, hanging by a thread of life, managed to use a dagger to cut his own arm again and again among the crags where the plants looked no different from ordinary grass? How much blood had he shed? How many times had he endured the torment of hope and despair? How had he finally found the Ten-Blood Flower with such precision?

Perhaps only the General of Chang'an himself knew.

“I want to see him. I want to—”

Guli could not wait another moment. After hearing all this, she felt as though her heart had been sliced to pieces. She lost all reason, struggling to rise from the bed.

“Go, go, go!” Jasmine had finally understood why the princess was so utterly devoted to the General of Chang'an. A man so loyal and so true—there was no way the princess had loved the wrong person.

Anyone who was good to the princess, Jasmine would from the bottom of her heart treat as her own master.

At such a time, she certainly would not try to stop the princess. She merely helped her to her feet and hurried to fetch an outer robe for her to put on.

“Wait.”

The Crown Prince, too, would not obstruct her. Right now, only Guli could save Chang'an. But he knew that if Guli went to see Chang'an as a princess, the news would likely reach the Empress before she even arrived at the East Palace.

After thinking it over, the Crown Prince said solemnly, “Jasmine, find a maid’s clothes for the princess to change into. Have her disguise herself as a servant and go with me to the East Palace.”

Guli’s mind was still buzzing; all her thoughts had been left behind with Chang'an. She had no spare energy to weigh the pros and cons. Naturally, whatever the Crown Prince said, she agreed to. Under Jasmine’s care, she obediently changed into a maid’s dress and followed behind the Crown Prince to the East Palace.