Chapter 139: I’m Begging You, I’m Begging You...
Chapter 139: Chapter 139: I’m Begging You, I’m Begging You...
Cui Lingyao fell to her knees, reaching out a trembling hand to check for his breath.
He was breathing.
The tension left her body in a rush. She quickly patted his face. "Shen Tingyu? Shen Tingyu, wake up!"
There was no response.
They weren’t completely on the bank yet, and river water lapped at their bodies from time to time.
Cui Lingyao glanced around. They were in the middle of nowhere.
No villages, no signs of life.
There was only a small, weed-choked path nearby.
Clearly, no one had been here for a very long time.
And after such a heavy storm, it was unlikely anyone would pass by to rescue them.
Her only hope was that Xie Jinbai’s men would find them soon.
But the most pressing matter right now was Shen Tingyu.
Cui Lingyao coughed weakly a few times. Forcing herself to rally, she unhesitatingly removed her outer robe, bandaged the wound on Shen Tingyu’s back, and then dragged the unconscious man fully onto the bank.
The effort exhausted her, and a sharp, twisting pain flared in her gut. But the fainted man showed no sign of waking.
He had drowned.
His breathing was faint.
His life could be in danger at any moment.
Cui Lingyao was terrified. Racking her brain for any first-aid knowledge she had, she cast aside all other concerns, knelt beside him, placed her clasped hands on his stomach, and began to press down with all her might.
"Shen Tingyu! Shen Tingyu, wake up! Don’t scare me..."
Her voice trembled, and tears streamed down her face. She took his chin in her hand, lowered her head, and breathed air into his mouth.
She repeated this over and over until the man’s lips finally twitched. He coughed up the filthy water clogging his airways, and a spark of life returned to him...
Before she could feel any relief, a furious roar echoed from a distance.
"What are you two doing!"
Cui Lingyao shuddered and whipped her head around.
It was Xie Jinbai.
He was standing waist-deep in the water, his hair crown askew and his robes soaked through. He looked more disheveled than she had ever seen him, but his eyes, cold and deep as a winter pool, were fixed on them.
’He found me. He actually found me so quickly.’
Cui Lingyao’s eyes reddened. The moment she saw him, an inexplicable sense of grievance surged through her. A bitter sting filled her nose, and the pain in her body intensified. The strength she had summoned to save Shen Tingyu rapidly drained away, and the agony inside her became unbearable.
Her straight back slumped forward, and her body went limp.
Xie Jinbai’s expression changed drastically. He leaped forward, closing the distance in an instant.
"Yaoyao?"
He scooped her into his arms, pressing a palm to her back as a steady stream of Inner Strength flowed from his hand into her body.
A comforting warmth spread through her limbs.
Her clothes dried, as did her hair.
The bone-deep chill slowly dissipated.
"Where are you hurt?" Forgetting the scene he had just witnessed, Xie Jinbai stared at the girl in his arms with bloodshot eyes. "Yaoyao, where are you hurt?"
He was terrified.
His face was deathly pale, his entire being consumed by fear.
Cui Lingyao took a shallow breath and forced a smile, her voice laced with grievance. "What took you so long? Didn’t you send men to protect me? They never showed up."
"My fault. It’s all my fault."
Xie Jinbai held her, his heart twisting in agony. He lowered his head until their foreheads touched and explained in a trembling voice, "Liu Yue betrayed me. He was the one arranging your security detail."
Liu Yue was the commander of the Yulin Guards.
Of course he would have a few trusted subordinates.
Cui Lingyao was surprised. She never would have thought Liu Yue would betray him.
Before she could dwell on it, a sharp pain shot through her abdomen again. She turned pale and clutched her stomach, whispering, "Did the waves give me an internal injury? It hurts so much."
As she spoke, a metallic, sweet taste rose in her throat.
Blood trickled down the corner of her mouth.
Not wanting to worry him, Cui Lingyao quickly wiped it away with her hand.
But she saw that the blood on the back of her hand was an unnatural, dark color.
She froze.
It dawned on her that this wasn’t a simple internal injury.
"Yaoyao!"
Xie Jinbai saw the blood continuously flowing from the corner of her mouth. Realization struck him, and his pupils trembled violently. He frantically poured more Inner Strength into her. "It’s okay, you’ll be okay. I’ll take you back right now. Please, please..."
But they were in the middle of nowhere. Forget a boat; there wasn’t even a wooden hut to shelter them from the wind.
Unless he sprouted wings, there was no way for him to leave this place with her.
They could only wait for someone to find them.
Cui Lingyao gripped his sleeve. "I’ve been poisoned?"
’Who poisoned me? Ever since leaving the Capital City, I’ve been so careful about everything I eat. I either ate with Shen Tingyu or by myself. My loyal servants from the Capital City were with me, and none of my food or clothing ever passed through the Pei Family’s hands. Except... a few times, when the Pei family called me to the front hall to meet relatives. I drank a few cups of tea there. The Pei family? The Pei Family... the Empress...’
Cui Lingyao’s breath caught. "Was it the Empress?"
"Don’t be afraid," Xie Jinbai said, holding her. It was unclear if he was comforting her or himself. "The Empress only wants to use your safety to threaten me. She won’t actually take your life. You’ll be fine."
’She has to be fine. Otherwise, no one can bear the consequences.’
He had thought that the Empress was mobilizing her hidden piece, Liu Yue, simply to catch him off guard and abduct Yaoyao.
He never expected that she had already been poisoned beforehand.
It was a two-pronged approach; if one part failed, it wouldn’t matter.
If they could abduct her, they would have a stronger bargaining chip.
If they couldn’t, the poison served as their leverage.
But the Empress would never dare to actually take the life of the girl in his arms.
Xie Jinbai kept repeating this to himself, but seeing her small face scrunched up in pain and the blood that kept flowing from her lips, he still panicked.
"Why did you jump into the river with him!" The memory of the scene he’d witnessed sent a murderous rage surging through Xie Jinbai. He wished for nothing more than to subject the man beside them to death by a thousand cuts.
Just then, Shen Tingyu woke up. Coughing violently and ignoring the murderous aura radiating from Xie Jinbai, he used what little strength he’d recovered to prop himself up. He took Cui Lingyao’s wrist and placed three fingers on it.
In an instant, Xie Jinbai’s vicious aura intensified. He raised his hand to strike the man dead, but when he saw him taking her pulse, his arm froze in mid-air.
Cui Lingyao pulled his hand down and whispered, "My cousin is a skilled physician. He noticed something strange about my pulse yesterday."
It was possible the poison had just been administered, so the signs in her pulse weren’t obvious.
It was also possible that the poison the Empress prepared for her was a rare and peculiar concoction, one seldom seen in the world.
That was why Shen Tingyu couldn’t diagnose it.
At that moment, all three of them believed the Empress wasn’t a fool. Whatever the poison was, it wouldn’t be life-threatening.
Cui Lingyao stopped worrying about her own life. Instead, she grew concerned that the jealous man before her would make trouble for Shen Tingyu later. Enduring the pain in her abdomen, she began to explain.
"I jumped into the river for no other reason than to avoid falling into Li Lu’s hands."
After all, Li Lu was Li Wanrong’s full-blooded brother. His own sister had suffered for three years because of her... If she fell into his hands now, how could she possibly escape unscathed?
During her three years as Princess Consort Yu, Li Lu had called her sister-in-law for three years.
Though they weren’t close, his dissolute reputation was known throughout the Capital City, and Cui Lingyao had certainly heard the rumors.
That kind of hedonistic young master had no other skills to speak of, but he had an endless array of methods for toying with women.
’What if he assumed that no matter what he did, a woman like me would just suffer in silence to protect my honor, not daring to tell anyone? What if he tried to humiliate me in every way imaginable?’