Chapter 400 Walking into the Trap

Chapter 400: Walking into the Trap

"Yaozhen, are you talking about me?"

A voice as cold as frost pierced through the night, like a basin of bone-chilling water, dousing the raging flames in Jiang Yaozhen's heart.

This voice...

Jiang Yaozhen stiffly turned her head inch by inch.

When she saw who it was, she felt as if struck by lightning, utterly frozen in place.

In the shadows not far away, Jiang Shuning stood quietly.

She was wrapped in a dark cloak, holding the swaddled Little Yejun in her arms. Her expression was calm and composed, her eyes clear and cold—with no trace of panic or disarray from someone who had just survived an assassination.

"How is this possible..." Jiang Yaozhen's eyes were filled with shock and resentment. "I clearly sent people to kill you..."

"Lady Wei, are you referring to these two?"

A voice dripping with sarcasm rang out.

Ling Feng, wearing the same dark cloak but holding a soft pillow embroidered with mandarin ducks, swaggered out.

He casually tossed two black-clad men to the ground like burlap sacks; they landed with a dull thud, out cold.

Ling Feng clapped his hands, then prodded one of the bodies with his toe, sneering, "With such pathetic skills, they dare to take on assassination jobs?"

Jiang Yaozhen's blood ran cold, and she couldn't stop trembling.

Xiao Lingchuan had seen through her supposedly flawless assassination plot from the very beginning.

He had quietly set a trap, and she walked right into it!

Xiao Lingchuan finally released his grip on her neck, then flung her heavily to the ground. His voice was icy: "Jiang Yaozhen, your schemes have failed! When we return to Daye, you will go to the Court of Judicial Review and answer for your actions before the Minister!"

"Yaozhen," Jiang Shuning approached slowly, holding the child, her voice as cold as frost, "We have been sisters for over twenty years. I ask myself, have I ever done anything to wrong you? Why do you want to destroy me utterly?"

This question, like a sharp blade, instantly slashed through Jiang Yaozhen's last shred of reason.

She let out a sharp, piercing laugh that was especially eerie in the fire-lit night.

"Jiang Shuning, what I hate most is this act of yours!" Jiang Yaozhen laughed until tears streamed down her face. She pointed at Jiang Shuning, her voice shrill, "You've already gotten everything, yet you always put on this aloof and innocent act, as if everyone in the world owes you and should worship and respect you!"

"Since childhood, Father and Mother only had eyes for you, the legitimate daughter. They valued you, cherished you! What about me? Even though I'm prettier than you, more lively, and better at winning their favor, it doesn't change the fact that I'm a concubine's daughter!"

"They married you off to Xiao Lingchuan as his principal consort with great fanfare, but married me to Xiao Xiuzhan as a secondary consort! Didn't they know that if Father registered me under Mother's name and elevated me to secondary legitimate daughter, I would also be eligible to be a principal consort? But they didn't! They never planned for me at all!"

Hearing this, Jiang Shuning frowned slightly, her eyes full of confusion: "Yaozhen, what nonsense are you talking about? When you married Prince Rui, weren't you the principal consort?"

"I'm talking about the past life!"

The air turned to ice.

Jiang Shuning felt as if struck by lightning. She tightened her arms around the child and stared at her mad sister in disbelief.

"You... remembered the past life?"

"That's right! I remembered! That's why I hate you even more!"

"In the past life, Xiao Lingchuan said he liked me, but it was all an act! He was just using me to go after Xiao Xiuzhan! The person he truly loved and protected was you! The worst thing he did to you was only to keep you from having children! After you died, he killed me and my mother without hesitation! Do you know how much I hate him?"

"In this life, he has gone even further in his cruelty! From the very beginning, he has been relentlessly pressing me and my mother. Every scheme we painstakingly planned, he deliberately sabotaged, repeatedly making us suffer total defeat!"

Jiang Yaozhen, like a cornered beast, swept her gaze back and forth between Xiao Lingchuan and Jiang Shuning. "I am clearly more beautiful than you, more vivacious, better at pleasing men! Why has he fallen for you in both lives? Why didn't he choose me to be the woman by his side in this life? After all, both he and I... share the blood of the Nanyue people..."

Listening to Jiang Yaozhen's incoherent yet venomous words, Jiang Shuning felt both absurd and shocked.

In fact, during the long and painful years of that past life, how she had envied and admired Jiang Yaozhen.

Jiang Yaozhen was gorgeous and flamboyant, like a peony in full bloom, passionate and unrestrained.

She was lively and charming, with a captivating smile. Wherever she was, the eyes of all men would follow her.

Even Xiao Lingchuan, the husband she loved but who was always cold and distant to her, would often let his gaze drift to the smiling Jiang Yaozhen at banquets.

Those looks, like fine needles, pricked her heart, leaving it full of holes.

She had secretly grieved for many nights, feeling like moss in a corner—dark and insignificant.

But she never imagined that in the corner she couldn't see, the sister she had envied and resented for a whole lifetime had also been looking at her with the same venomous jealousy.

"Yaozhen, none of what you said can justify your desire to harm me," Jiang Shuning's voice remained cold, but with a hint of tired hoarseness. "I envied you once too, but I never thought of hurting you."

These words lit the madness in Jiang Yaozhen's eyes.

She let out a sharp, piercing laugh, her face, covered by a human skin mask that made her look exactly like Jiang Shuning, twisting into a terrifying expression: "Jiang Shuning, I'm sick of your hypocritical act! Just die!"

As her words died away, she lunged like a cornered beast, screaming, charging wildly at Jiang Shuning and her child!

The dagger in her hand aimed straight at Little Yejun in his swaddling clothes.

In a flash, Ling Feng swiftly drew his sword, and the cold blade ran through Jiang Yaozhen's body without resistance, piercing her chest and coming out her back.

Almost at the same instant Jiang Yaozhen moved, Xiao Lingchuan whirled around and pulled Jiang Shuning and her child into his arms.

His broad, warm chest was like an indestructible wall, firmly shielding the mother and child from all danger and bloodshed.

With a thud, Jiang Yaozhen fell flat on her back to the ground.

Warm blood quickly spread, melting and staining the white snow beneath her, like an eerie red spider lily blooming in the snow.

Jiang Shuning emerged from Xiao Lingchuan's embrace, looking at her sister lying in a pool of blood, her life rapidly slipping away. Her heart was filled with mixed emotions.

Jiang Yaozhen was dead.

She had remembered the past life, and with a heart full of resentment and hatred, she ultimately met this end.

If only she hadn't been so obsessed with revenge, she might not have died in this life.

Xiao Lingchuan looked at Jiang Yaozhen's face, which bore Jiang Shuning's features, and his brows furrowed, his eyes filled with barely concealed disgust.

"Ling Feng," he ordered coldly, "tear off that human-skin mask from her face!"

"Letting her die in front of me with Shuning's face—it disgusts me."

"Yes."

Ling Feng nodded, stepped forward, crouched down, and fumbled at the edge of the mask behind Jiang Yaozhen's ear for a moment, then ripped it off with a sharp tug.

A human-skin mask, as thin as a cicada's wing, was peeled off.

However, the sight beneath the mask made everyone present gasp in shock.

It was not Jiang Yaozhen's originally radiant and beautiful face, but a face that had long rotted and festered, bloody and mangled, with features so distorted that it was unrecognizable as a human face.

"No wonder I didn't even recognize her that night outside the palace." Ling Feng threw the mask to the ground with disgust, murmuring, "So her face was already ruined back then."

"Disfigured?" Jiang Shuning's heart clenched, and she instinctively gripped Xiao Lingchuan's sleeve. "Who disfigured her?"

"Jiang Tianze."

Xiao Lingchuan spat out the name, his voice as cold as ice.

"That bastard's blood is poisonous. Jiang Yaozhen was foolish enough to try to assassinate him. She failed, and instead was splashed in the face with his toxic blood, which ate away her face."

A bone-chilling cold crawled up Jiang Shuning's spine, giving her goosebumps all over.

So this was the horrific price of revenge.

The avenger ended up disfigured beyond recognition by the very person she targeted, in an even crueler twist.

The world's karma was both ironic and terrifying.