Chapter Ninety-One: You Have Been Cursed

“Wait.”

Su Jingluo stepped out from the crowd and looked at Lin Wanwan.

“Your Grace, we really cannot wait. This is already the fourth imperial summons. The Empress Dowager’s illness cannot be delayed any longer,” several eunuchs said anxiously, like ants on a hot griddle. They had no idea what fresh trouble this princess was going to cause, or whether she meant to refuse again. The moment Su Jingluo paused, their hearts began to pound.

“If you’re in a hurry, go ahead first. I’ll be there shortly,” Su Jingluo said, pointing toward the carriage.

The eunuchs exchanged miserable looks. If they left first, returning to the palace would be like stepping straight onto the road to the underworld.

Su Jingluo said nothing more and walked up to Lin Wanwan. Lin Wanwan, like a fish stranded ashore only to meet the rising tide, saw the ashen deadness in her eyes begin to brighten.

“Princess, this is everything I have. Please, take it all and save me.” Lin Wanwan’s hands were stiff with cold. Clumsily, she drew out all her valuables from her bosom—silver, jewelry, everything—and held them out to Su Jingluo.

Su Jingluo glanced at them. Lin Wanwan must not have been living well either. To be honest, even this pitiful little stash was nowhere near the trifles the emperor had rewarded her with these past two times. Poor birth, penniless, and still forced to beg for help, yet she had to go around stirring up trouble. Was this the kind of personality that never knew when enough self-destruction was enough? Still, she had already learned her lesson, and Su Jingluo did not want to make things difficult for her anymore.

After telling A Lan to accept the things, Su Jingluo led Lin Wanwan to the gatehouse. Once all the servants had withdrawn, she told Lin Wanwan to lift her veil.

The moment the veil came off, Su Jingluo could not help frowning. The pimples across her face had already begun to suppurate, and after standing guard all night, there was even a touch of frostbite on her skin. Up close, there was also a faint stench of decay.

Was Yun Bai really so ruthless with a child?

Now this face was enough to make anyone who saw it want to throw up; the brilliance she had shown that night was gone without a trace.

Using a bamboo pick, Su Jingluo lifted a little of the pus from Lin Wanwan’s face and sniffed it carefully. No, that was not right. The poison Yun Bai had used should have been only a tiny insect. After biting, it would secrete something that caused the skin to inflame and erupt in pimples. The secretion of that insect carried a distinctive fragrance; the poison was not strong and would only cause acne, gradually improving over the course of up to a month.

Su Jingluo could not help but feel regret. Looking more closely, the suppurating flesh on her face seemed to come from deep within the skin, which meant Lin Wanwan had been afflicted by a gu parasite, one that had damaged the internal structure of her body. That had nothing to do with Yun Bai anymore. Setting aside whether Yun Bai even knew how to use gu, she would never have gotten close enough to Lin Wanwan’s food to do this.

Because the original owner had slammed her head into a wall so violently, many memories were missing. Every time she tried to recall them, her head ached. Yet some things still remained somewhere in her mind. This gu worm felt familiar, but she could not remember exactly what it was for the moment.

“You know you’ve been poisoned by gu, don’t you?” Su Jingluo put down the bamboo pick and stated the answer plainly. She had not expected that someone as skilled in acting as Lin Wanwan could still offend an even more formidable figure, and that someone would go to such lengths to poison her. What a deep grudge.

“I don’t know.” Lin Wanwan was not at all surprised. She simply lowered her head, weighed down by worry.

Don’t know my foot. At this rate, you probably even know where the other person’s ancestral grave is.

Whoever had poisoned her was clearly someone she could not afford to offend. She had been poisoned and did not even dare make a sound about it—certainly a status she was afraid to reveal.

“If you say you don’t know, then you don’t know. Still, you may have heard that I injured my head before, so I can’t remember what kind of gu this is or how to cure it. For now, I can only suppress the worm in your body. Once I remember, I’ll deal with it properly for you.”

Su Jingluo did not want to expose Lin Wanwan. What was the point? Whoever she had feud with would be the one to deal with her, and it had nothing to do with Su Jingluo. If she wanted to say, let her say; if not, so be it.