nashuaworldcup Chapter 135 Living and dying together
Chapter 135 Living and dying together
The inner chamber of Prince Jing's mansion was filled with an ambiguous atmosphere as guard Xiao Feng crouched down to enter.
The bed curtains still revealed a disheveled state.
Xiao Feng paused, then stepped back behind the screen to stand guard without saying a word.
After a long while, Xiao Feng came to the outside of the bed curtains and said softly, "Your Highness, the matter has been taken care of."
A moment of silence fell within the bed curtains, yet a tender teasing lingered.
"Did you see everything clearly?" Gu Yuan asked lazily.
“The people guarding there have reported,” Xiao Feng said respectfully, “that the rocks outside the cave have collapsed and it will take at least a day to repair them, making it very difficult for them to escape the secret chamber.”
"Tell me," Gu Yuan said lazily, "which kind of death would be more aesthetically pleasing?"
"Smash them to death? Poison them to death?"
"I don't know," Xiao Feng replied honestly.
Gu Yuan said to himself, "If he were directly smashed to death, he would probably be a bloody mess, but if he dies from poisoning, it would be a pity that I would not be able to see it with my own eyes."
"Who do you think will die first, him or Jiang Zhi?"
“The Princess Consort of Liang looks like a delicate woman, so naturally she is no match for the Prince of Liang,” Xiao Feng replied.
“How could she be a delicate woman?” Gu Yuan lay on the soft, warm ground. “She has ruined my plans time and time again. This time, I might as well let the two of them die together. I will also create a beautiful story.”
The sound of dripping water reached my ears, and a drop of sweat fell onto the stone slab.
Gu Liang stood motionless.
His eyes were lowered, and his face grew increasingly pale.
Jiang Zhi stared at his graying hair and thought for a moment.
She took a step forward, shortening the distance between herself and Gu Liang.
Jiang Zhi's approach caused the toxins in Gu Liang's body to gnaw at his nerves at an accelerated rate.
What caught him off guard was that a strange impulse also numbed his brain.
Gu Liang looked away from Jiang Zhi, but the impulse remained undiminished.
Then Jiang Zhi grabbed a hairpin and plunged it into his forearm.
Gu Liang immediately became much more sober.
Seeing Gu Liang's brows relax, Jiang Zhi's face lit up with joy, and she put the hairpin back into her sleeve.
"No need to thank me this time," Jiang Zhi said with a rising tone.
Although she was not a doctor, she knew a little about medicine and had seen doctors use silver needles to prick acupoints or to bleed patients to bring them back to consciousness.
"How ruthless are you? Who taught you that?" Gu Liang teased.
He hadn't expected Jiang Zhi to be so in sync with him. Just now, when she leaned closer, a way to clear his head flashed through his mind.
But she got there first; she had thought that if he had taken it, the hairpin could still be his.
A perfectly good reason has fallen apart just like that. If that's the case, then it's okay to be unreasonable.
Jiang Zhi frowned and clicked his tongue, then pulled out a dagger from his pocket. "A knife is better."
This was given to her by Gu Liang; Lou Shuangxin had just told him to commit suicide.
"Hmm?" Gu Liang stared at the dagger in Jiang Zhi's hand, his gaze darkening.
"Keep this safe, you'll need it later," he explained. "Don't hurt yourself."
"Wait a minute?" Jiang Zhi was sure he hadn't misheard.
"Yes." Gu Liang looked up. "I will open the passage and send you out."
"And what about you?" Jiang Zhi precisely seized upon a certain word in his words, "Aren't you going out?"
She had been observing Gu Liang ever since he fell, until his hair turned white, at which point she began to prepare for the worst.
"Something's wrong with you," Jiang Zhi bluntly pointed out. "You've been poisoned, haven't you?"
Gu Liang did not answer her question, but said only, "Although the cave above has collapsed, Qinghuai and the others are outside. They can dig the cave open in one or two days at the latest."
"Once they find the entrance to the hole, they'll have a way to get us out."
“You haven’t answered my question yet,” Jiang Zhi stared at him, “What kind of poison have you been given?”
"Jiang Zhutao." Gu Liang called her name, his tone no longer gentle.
“Gu Liang,” Jiang Zhi said fiercely.
"You said Qinghuai would come to save us from up there," Jiang Zhi's eyes slowly hardened with emotion, "Are you really going to let me go alone?"
She looked up and saw the tinderbox hanging in the air, burning slowly.
"Aren't you worried that something might happen to me again? Are you really that fearless?!" she pressed, asking each question relentlessly.
How could he not worry? He was just afraid that his poison would overwhelm him and harm her.
“No one will know about this exit,” Gu Liang said, frowning slightly.
He also learned about an incident from an old book given to him by the abbot, which mentioned that a trapped monk was in this secret room, and he guessed that there was an exit.
Jiang Zhi naturally didn't believe it. "Since someone knows about this secret room, they must also know about this exit."
Before she could finish speaking, Gu Liang leaped up the stone wall.
Gu Liang suppressed the heat in his heart and looked up again, his eyes turning colder.
He swung his fist at the stone in front of him, and the stone shattered and flew far away.
A cave entrance with no end in sight was revealed, and Gu Liang pushed aside the loose boulders one by one.
A gust of cold wind suddenly rushed in, carrying a cool, damp feel.
Gu Liang closed her eyes and sensed for a while, but found nothing, before jumping back to Jiang Zhi's side.
“Come on.” He reached out his hand to Jiang Zhi. “I’ll take you up.”
His tone was somewhat restrained, and Jiang Zhi could sense that he was suppressing something.
She didn't say anything more and obediently let Gu Liang lead her up.
In the instant he was lifted into the air, Jiang Zhi instinctively closed his eyes.
A cool breeze blew in her face. When Jiang Zhi opened her eyes, she was already outside the cave entrance, and all she could see was pitch black.
Gu Liang turned around and retrieved a tinderbox. In the firelight, Jiang Zhi finally realized that she was standing in a passageway.
The passage seemed to have formed naturally; the ground was slightly damp, and water droplets clung to the walls, occasionally falling down.
Gu Liang placed the tinderbox in Jiang Zhi's hand and patted him gently, saying, "Keep moving forward slowly."
Without thinking, Jiang Zhi grabbed his wrist. "And what about you?"
Gu Liang watched her quietly, letting her pull him along.
"You're concerned about me?" he suddenly asked.
“You are my husband, after all,” Jiang Zhi said, feigning indifference. “I would never be so disloyal.”
He looked down and smiled. "Then I still feel that you care about me."
Jiang Zhi glanced at him.
Who taught him that familiar tone of voice...?
"I've been poisoned," Gu Liang suddenly said. "I can't control it. I'll lose my mind and do incomprehensible things."
Jiang Zhi paused, then she understood.
It wasn't an accident that she saw Old Master Han at the Prince's Mansion; her initial guess was correct.
She gazed at him, her eyes piercing.
How much longer can you hold on?
Gu Liang did not answer.
If he hadn't endured the pain of being in the medicine for the past six years, he wouldn't still be able to control his body now.
Jiang Zhi gripped the front of his shirt tightly, gritted her teeth, and said, "Wait for me, wait for me to find the exit, and I'll bring people to rescue you right away."
She let go of Gu Liang, turned around and took a few steps, then hurriedly came back.
She took the hairpin she had previously removed from her sleeve and placed it in Gu Liang's hand.
"Use this, it's less harmful to your health, wait for me."
After saying that, she ran deeper into the passage.