A vicious roar rang out, followed by indistinct, soft sobbing—it seemed the scolded girl was trying to explain.
But soon, the scolding turned into beating.
The dull thuds were clearly delivered with deadly force.
The young, childish voice kept pleading for mercy, her whimpers growing weaker.
Joen frowned slightly and traced the sound.
He saw a burly servant holding a two-meter-long discipline rod, beating a thinly clothed young girl.
Bright red blood had already stained her emerald-green skirt.
Without hesitation, Joen strode forward and reached out to block the rod.
“Please stop.”
“You…”
The servant recognized Joen and swallowed the rest of his words along with his spit.
“My lord, I greet you.”
“What crime did she commit to deserve such a severe punishment?”
Joen interrupted.
“She was supposed to go in as a dancer and serve you, but she hid here to slack off. According to the mansion’s rules, I must teach her a lesson, or it would damage His Highness the Second Prince’s authority.”
Struggling, the girl lifted her head with effort, barely breathing, but stubbornly retorted: “I did not… I am not a dancer… I never took a single coin from you…”
“Silence! If you’re not a dancer, what are you? The young master or young lady of this mansion? Brave One, do not be fooled by her.”
At that moment, Joen turned around and got a clear look at the girl.
She had a dirty face, yet she was still breathtakingly beautiful.
Especially compared to the heavily made-up dancers in the front hall, her natural beauty stood out even more.
Her features were pure and pitiful, but there was an unusual stubbornness in her eyes, burning with a heat Joen had seen in himself when he first entered society.
The girl was as fragile as a little white flower, so thin she was almost shapeless.
Severe malnutrition made her look as if a gust of wind could knock her over.
Even Joen couldn’t help but take a second look.
Liya, upon seeing this girl for the first time, felt a strong sense of crisis rising in her heart—it was too similar, this inexplicable déjà vu.
The girl struggled to stand up, her soft yet stubborn temperament, as if every smile and every move struck Joen’s preferences perfectly, like a piece of fine jade carefully carved by the heavens.
In the next second, Liya blushed with embarrassment and quickly dismissed the strange thought.
Her antenna-like strand of hair began to scream in alarm: ‘Not good! It’s a formidable rival!’
‘Pfft… formidable rival my ass! I must be crazy. Why do I want to scratch every woman who gets close to Joen?’
Just then, the girl stood up weakly in the wind, lost her balance, and fell toward Joen.
Joen instinctively reached out to support her.
The girl turned back and gave him a grateful smile, her eyebrows like ink and her eyes bright, beautiful and ethereal.
Liya’s small hands pinched Joen’s shoulders like a cat kneading, unable to hold back anymore.
“My name is Fei Bi,” she explained to the servant, her voice as sweet as an oriole falling into Joen’s ears.
“My mother was once a songstress in this mansion, but I am not. You’ve made a mistake. I, I…”
The servant was embarrassed, suddenly understanding.
Liya gave a cold, soft snort.
In Chinese cultural terms, this was a “house-born servant.”
A common situation in feudal families—children born from unions between servants also belonged to the master family by law, continuing as servants for generations.
Those with good luck had several family members working for the master, which could earn big money and serve as a means of social mobility—buying land and shops outside, transforming into landlords.
Those with bad luck had no one in the family who could get a job in the mansion, couldn’t leave, and had no legal, proper identity—they were stuck.
Judging by how thin and haggard this one looked, she clearly belonged to the latter.
Liya knew Joen well—he couldn’t stand seeing the poor go hungry and suffer.
Sure enough, before the girl could say anything else, Joen looked at her with pity and concern and asked:
“This is the Empire Capital, the Second Prince’s Mansion. How did you end up starving like this? Are your parents abusing you?”
Fei Bi lowered her eyes, tears welling up, but she stubbornly held back her sobs: “My mother was an old songstress in the mansion. She died of illness seven years ago. My father was a handyman, but he didn’t like me. He died three years ago too. Now I’m a ‘phantom person’ in the mansion—no job, no parents, and no legal identity to go out and earn a living.”
She was essentially stuck in a loophole of the feudal servant system.
Truly miserable.
“So people starve to death even in the Empire Capital…”
Joen sighed with emotion.
He thought for a moment and asked again, “The song you were playing just now—was it called ‘Wind Blown Lullaby’?”
“Yes, my mother taught me. Do you know it, Brave One?”
Fei Bi showed surprise.
“That’s a popular song from my hometown, Tulip Territory. Your mother must also be from Tulip Territory, maybe even the same village as me.”
The bond of shared hometown instantly closed the distance.
Joen looked at this girl, his sympathy growing stronger.
Fei Bi’s bright brown eyes shimmered with a pink luster.
She was obviously very beautiful, but it made Liya sick.
It was the first time she had felt such an irrational, intense disgust.
Really… so unreasonable! And not fun at all!
That’s enough!
Liya didn’t want to taste any more of the bittersweetness of “love.”
She simply closed her eyes in a huff, refusing to look anymore.
An autumn wind brushed her cheek and blew into the front hall.
At the banquet, the Second Prince Gibran swirled his goblet, a beautiful dancer in his arms.
He held a warm, fragrant beauty, but his mind was elsewhere.
His spirit was immersed in the rear garden, in the “theater” of life he had personally arranged.
Gibran never believed in love, but he was a master at weaving love stories.
He used this method to win over and control many young up-and-comers in the Empire Capital.
Those people would never realize that behind their sweet, loving “true loves” was a man’s big hand pulling the strings.
Fewer still knew that his War Class was “Puppet Master of Resonance Sequence.”
After organizing all the intelligence on Joen, Gibran carefully analyzed him.
First, Joen was naive about the world, proud and upright, and found it hard to fit into the normal social circles of the Empire Capital.
He must be lonely deep down, craving a soulmate.
Second, Joen had an excess of kindness and a strong Messiah complex.
He would never ignore the suffering of others and was naturally drawn to the downtrodden.
The closeness a prince could offer him was probably not as strong as that of a random commoner on the street.
So, Gibran arranged this “fated encounter.”
A status even lower than a commoner—the daughter of a songstress and a handyman, named Fei Bi.
Such a setup would most easily arouse the Brave One’s sympathy.
The tragedy of losing both parents echoed Joen’s own childhood loss of his parents—one old pain, one new grief; the former could comfort the latter, and the latter could heal the former.
As the two huddled together for warmth, their psychological distance would rapidly shrink, and a stable, ambiguous emotional bond could be successfully formed.
Of course, all of this identity was just a backstory he had carefully crafted for the Brave One.
Fei Bi’s true origin was actually a byproduct of a failed “demonic experiment,” his most satisfactory puppet.
Infused with 40% Succubus bloodline, she still maintained stable traits, possessed most of a Succubus’s power, could successfully block the God of Demons’ interference, and showed no outward demonic features.
To put on this show, he had used magic to forcibly drain 20% of the puppet’s fat and water the night before, creating this pitifully ill-looking appearance.
The plan had been discussed with the Grand Tutor in advance.
The Grand Tutor’s expression had been grave at the time, and it took him a while to say: “Your Highness, your sacrifice is too great.”
“As long as I can keep the Brave One occupied and prevent him from poking into the treasury’s rotten accounts and discovering the human experiments I’ve been doing privately for the nation, everything is fine,” he had said with a righteous air.
The Grand Tutor sighed: “Alas… you are all good children, all for this country.”