Famine and exile: I brought the Spirit Spring to save the entire Marquis's mansion.

"Even though I've never met Luo Songtao, I know he must be a kind-hearted person. How can a wicked woman like you have the face to see him again!"

Huo Chang'an truly felt sorry for that uncle he had never met!

I can't believe I've been involved with such a disgusting and vicious woman.

"Exactly! If I were Luo Songtao, I would rather find a beggar woman than get entangled with a vixen like you. It's good that he didn't come back to find you!"

I bet he's already surrounded by wives and concubines, with a house full of children and grandchildren, living a comfortable and peaceful retirement!

Shen Ye deliberately provoked Song Chan, and he was happy to see her face contorted in pain!

"Don't talk nonsense," Huo Chang'an whispered to him. "That was Sang Ning's maternal uncle, who is no longer alive."

Shen Ye was stunned.

What a tragic fate!

"What do you know! He abandoned me first!" Song Chan shouted angrily, her eyes bloodshot.

"He broke his oath first! I wasn't born a Gu woman!"

He never returned. It was my first time leaving southern Xinjiang, and I was terrified!

You Han people are all liars! I was bullied time and time again. By the time I returned to southern Xinjiang, I was half dead!

"I won't become a Gu witch! If I don't become a Gu witch, will I still be bullied?!"

Neither Shen Ye nor Huo Chang'an spoke this time.

No one can laugh at a woman who has experienced hardship; on the contrary, they feel sympathy for her.

This has nothing to do with the fact that they were bound to kill Song Chan.

A sorceress then spoke up for her: "It's true."

Twenty years ago, when Song Chan returned to the southern border, she was covered in wounds and three months pregnant.

Later, she gave birth to a daughter, and then abandoned her at the entrance of the village.

Because it was a bastard child.

Song Chan burst into laughter, her eyes filled with a mixture of sorrow and resentment.

"That's definitely a bastard!"

Luo Songtao is a high-ranking, wealthy young man. How could those Han people possibly look down on us, such uncouth Miao girls!

Luo Songtao, he never touched me!

Even when we are deeply in love, he will push us away.

He said he would wait until his wedding night.

Later, I realized that he was just disgusted by it.

You have no idea how gentle and lovely those Han Chinese women are!

How gentle and lovely she is.

With so many beautiful women out there, why did he choose to marry this penniless Miao girl?

He lied to her; he had been lying to her all along.

Song Chan had thought about it countless times, but every time she thought about it, she still felt unbearable pain.

She wavered between deceiving and not deceiving, almost tearing herself apart.

"If that's the case, why are you still so determined to find him? Do you want to kill him?"

Huo Chang'an's eyes were filled with complex emotions.

It turns out nothing happened between the two of them.

However, this ill-fated relationship cost Song Chan her entire life.

She was too obsessive, terribly obsessive.

If Luo Songtao really marries her, she might be burdened by him in the future.

"Kill him? That was my initial thought."

Later, when I couldn't find it, I stopped thinking about it.

She had tried to let go and forgive herself, but a persistent obsession remained in her heart.

Find him, meet him again, and get to the bottom of things.

While in the capital, she also used Yan Mingyu's connections to search for a long time.

But they couldn't find any trace of Luo Songtao.

She even thought his name was fake!

But what to do?

She doesn't know what else to do besides looking for Luo Songtao.

Song Chan finally remembered what Huo Chang'an had said earlier.

"You say you've never seen him? Then how do you know him? Are you lying to me?"

I hold so many lives in my hands that I can't even count them all. Let me see him once, and I'll spare everyone else.

“You won’t see him anymore. He died twenty years ago,” Huo Chang’an said.

According to Song Chan, Huo Chang'an suspected that Luo Songtao went to the capital and never returned to Jingzhou.

Because that was right after Luo Liyun died.

Could it be that my uncle was killed by Sang Xiuqi while trying to avenge my mother-in-law?

"What did you say?" Song Chan asked blankly.

"You couldn't find Luo Songtao's name at the county government office because that person is no longer here."

After leaving southern Xinjiang, he was murdered and never returned home.

He never abandoned you, do you understand?

Luo Songtao has been dead for twenty years.

He never abandoned her.

Song Chan has completely lost her mind.

She scratched her face with her fingernails, saying she wouldn't let Luo Songtao recognize her anymore.

She begged Huo Chang'an to avenge Luo Songtao, and cut open her stomach to retrieve the Gu King.

The cut-open abdomen didn't bleed much, but the Gu King's entire body had turned red.

Aunt Jiu said that it controls at least thirty people, which is why the Gu King needs to absorb a lot of its master's blood.

Even if Song Chan isn't killed, she will soon suffer a backlash and die.

She's crazy.

Perhaps they've long since given up on living.

Shen Ye realized that for a woman as obsessive and ruthless as Song Chan, neither slow slicing nor burning would frighten her.

What she feared most was actually a love affair from her youth.

She was trapped in the past twenty years and never took another step out.

What kind of life would she have led if she hadn't met Luo Songtao?

In their view, this was a tragic relationship.

But judging from her appearance, she didn't seem to regret it.

As if recalling their past, Song Chan laughed for a while, then curled up, covered her face, and sobbed.

Finally, her body aged rapidly, becoming like a withered, dehydrated dead fish.

……

"My lord, General Beigong requests your presence," a soldier reported.

Huo Chang'an and Shen Ye went together.

Bei Gongyao has incorporated the 80,000 troops left behind by Hong Kang, but he has discovered a strange problem.

"My lord, didn't you say that Hongkang had amassed countless riches to recruit soldiers and buy horses?"

But these people were border troops who had come to seek refuge with him.

The imperial court did not provide military rations, and they had hoped that their lives would be better if they joined Hongkang. However, after three months of service, Hongkang only offered empty promises and provided rations once. They still had to hunt and find wild vegetables all over the mountains on their own.

Logically speaking, with so much wealth he'd amassed, supporting an army of 200,000 shouldn't have been a problem.

“There shouldn’t be any problem.” Huo Chang’an was momentarily confused. “Could it be that he hid all the money? We’ve searched the entire Prince’s mansion, where could he have hidden it?”

"Does he have troops elsewhere?" Bei Gongyao wondered.

"What's the use of having troops elsewhere when everyone's dead? There's no need to hide them!"

Everyone frowned in thought.

Gradually, Huo Chang'an's expression changed.

"The Third Prince, the Crown Prince, the Grand Princess, Prince Huaishan, Hongkang..."

Five years ago, besides Hongkang being expelled from Beijing, what else happened?

Yan Meng, Bei Gongyao, and Huo Jiangchu were not from the capital, so how could they possibly know about matters at the heart of imperial power?

Shen Ye thought for a moment and then remembered something.

“I remember that Hong Kang was driven out not only because he caused a scene in the Golden Palace, but also because he was impeached for corruption and embezzlement.”

It seems that something did happen at that time. One night, my father returned home from the palace late at night, wiping his armor as if he were going to the battlefield.

But nothing happened afterward.

"Was it the eighteenth day of the first lunar month?"

Because Hongkang's concubine had just been offering incense on the fifteenth of the month when the incident occurred, for the next two days, Hongkang clung to his father like a mad dog.

Their whole family was very worried.

On the eighteenth day, Huo Chang'an remembered that his father and elder brother also came home very late.

After returning home, I went into the study.