Chapter 398 He Wrote His Own Defeat

Chapter 398: He Scripted His Own Downfall

Jiang Tianze never expected to survive.

His eyelids were as heavy as lead, and each attempt to lift them drained every ounce of his strength.

The bitter scent of medicinal herbs, mixed with the smell of blood, assaulted his nostrils.

He opened his eyes, and through blurred vision, a wrinkled face gradually came into focus, with a messy white beard hanging down to his chest.

It was Divine Physician Sun.

"You're awake?" Divine Physician Sun shook his head, a look of exasperation, as if he were a madman, in his clouded eyes. "In all my decades of practicing medicine, I've never seen a gu cultivator as obsessed as you. You planted so many deadly gu inside your own body—are you tired of living?"

Jiang Tianze's lips were cracked and dry, and he stared blankly at the bed canopy above.

He felt no surprise at still being alive, only a numb sense of being toyed with by fate.

His mother was dead.

In this lifetime, he would never have a chance to win Jiang Shuning's heart.

What was the point of living?

Divine Physician Sun ignored his deathly silence and rambled on, "But since the prince has ordered me to save your life at all costs, I will do my utmost. You're lucky to have survived. Don't worry—I've used golden needles to seal your acupoints and forced the mother gu out of your body. From now on, as long as you take your medicine as told and recuperate, the toxins will gradually be expelled!"

"Did Xiao Lingchuan send you to save me?" The dead silence was broken. A ferocious anger slowly crept across Jiang Tianze's previously wooden face.

He struggled to sit up, but the movement pulled at the wound on his abdomen. A sharp pain made him cough violently, his voice hoarse like a cracked gong. "Why did he save me? Is this the victor's pity for the loser? I don't need it!"

"You're overthinking it!"

An icy voice, like the cold wind of winter, swept in from the doorway.

The door swung open, and Xiao Lingchuan stood there tall and straight, dressed in a dark brocade robe. His handsome face showed no emotion.

He looked at Jiang Tianze, lying there wretchedly on the sickbed, as if he were looking at an inanimate object.

"Saving you is merely to send you back to Nanyue to take over that mess." Xiao Lingchuan's voice carried no warmth. "If you don't go, my seventh brother can't return to Daye to be his idle prince. Do you think I wanted to save you?"

These words were sharper than any blade, stripping away the last shred of his pathetic self-esteem.

So it was because he carried the blood of Nanyue's royal family. He was only kept alive because Xiao Lingchuan could use him as a pawn to control Nanyue.

Behind Xiao Lingchuan, a familiar figure stepped slowly in.

It was Jiang Shuning.

She was holding a delicate, fair-skinned toddler in her arms.

In that instant, all of Jiang Tianze's anger, resentment, and hatred seemed to drain away.

His world narrowed down to her alone.

His gaze was fixed on her, his throat dry, he rasped, "A Ning, you..."

"Tianze, how did you end up so badly injured?" Jiang Shuning, holding the child, hurried to his bedside. Her delicate face showed genuine concern, without a trace of pretense.

This caring remark felt like a red-hot needle, stabbing into Jiang Tianze's frozen heart.

Before he could think of how to answer, the child in her arms popped his little head out, staring at him with big, curious eyes like black grapes, and asked in a childish voice, "Mother, who is he?"

Jiang Tianze's heart clenched.

"Jun, he is your third maternal uncle!" Jiang Shuning lowered her head, her voice so gentle, dripping with tenderness. "Hurry, call him uncle!"

"Uncle!"

That clear, lively "uncle" struck Jiang Tianze like a thunderbolt.

He was completely frozen.

Half of his heart was filled with utter despair, while the other half held an absurd sense of relief.

The despair came from the fact that this one word "uncle" had completely severed all his delusions.

In this lifetime, he could only ever be her brother, the "third maternal uncle" of her child.

As for the relief... he had once, against her will, forcibly taken her away, causing her to be separated from her child and suffer the hardships of wandering.

Yet in her eyes, there was no hatred, no resentment.

She even... was willing to let her child acknowledge him, the one responsible, as an uncle.

Jiang Tianze trembled as he slowly extended his uninjured hand.

That hand, from blood loss and gu poison, was deathly pale, almost translucent, with blue veins visible beneath the skin.

He gently took the chubby little hand Little Yejun reached out to him.

Warm, soft, full of life.

"He is... your child?" His voice was rough, each word forced out of his throat.

"Yes," Jiang Shuning nodded, a soft maternal light shining in her eyes. "His name is Yejun. Xiao Yejun."

Xiao Yejun...

Jiang Tianze's heart throbbed again.

He recalled his own foolish plan from not long ago.

He had secretly infiltrated Prince Jing's mansion and stolen a child, fully believing it was Xiao Lingchuan's and her child, planning to use it as a bargaining chip.

Later, when he discovered that the child was merely a "fake," a decoy meant to mislead, the anger and frustration of being deceived almost consumed him.

He had Third Madam Jiang send the child back, but he himself, like a gambler who had lost his last bet, refused to leave.

Only now did he truly realize how wrong he had been.

He regretted it.

He regretted that he had been so obsessed and had to go to the capital.

If he hadn't tried to take her child, to use such despicable means to trap her at his side, how could Xiao Lingchuan have seized an opportunity? How could he have so easily tracked them down and taken Jiang Shuning away from him?

He had brought everything upon himself.

It was he who had personally pushed her further away, back into Xiao Lingchuan's arms.

He single-handedly orchestrated his own defeat.

Xiao Lingchuan, who had been ignored, darkened his expression as he looked at Jiang Tianze and spoke coldly again: "I heard from Ling Feng that the one who injured you was a woman, along with two men. The night was too dark for him to make out who they were."

Only then did Jiang Tianze shift his gaze from Jiang Shuning's face to Xiao Lingchuan, his voice low: "It was Jiang Yaozhen. She knows I used her aunt to refine the Gu poison and killed my mother, and now she has pursued me to Beiling specifically to take my life." Upon hearing this, Jiang Shuning was startled: "She actually came all the way to Beiling?"

Jiang Tianze nodded, his eyes tinged with worry: "I suspect her journey here isn't just to kill me. She has always been deeply jealous and resentful of you, and she might even try to harm you. You must be careful."

Jiang Shuning instinctively tightened her hold on Little Yejun.

She felt she owed Jiang Yaozhen nothing at all.

The hatred Jiang Yaozhen had once borne her out of jealousy and resentment seemed utterly ridiculous to her.

If Jiang Yaozhen insisted on hurting her, she would not hesitate to fight to the death—she was unafraid.

But now she had Little Yejun, and that was her weakness.

If it were only her being hurt, she could grit her teeth and bear it; but if anyone dared to touch a single hair on her child's head, she would stop at nothing to fight that person to the bitter end!

Xiao Lingchuan saw through the unease in her eyes and softly reassured her: "Shuning, don't worry. As long as I am here, no one dares to lay a hand on you or Jun."

Upon hearing this, Jiang Shuning's heart fluttered, and she cautiously probed: "Does Your Highness have a plan to deal with this?"

A barely perceptible sinister glint flashed in Xiao Lingchuan's eyes, and his every word carried weight: "Naturally... lure the snake out of its lair!"