On the red sandalwood carved gourd - shaped bed, Caiyu tossed and turned wrapped in the embroidered and edged emerald quilt.
She had been mentally exhausted at first, but now she was lying awake, wracking her brains to figure out how to stay in the side hall.
She didn't even know how she fell asleep. Anyway, when she woke up, the sun was already high in the sky.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the incense clock on the opposite shelf pointed to the hour of Si. Caiyu jolted upright in bed in fright. "Oh no! Nurse Li will surely kill me today!"
She quickly got out of bed, washed up briefly, put on a light purple silk jacket, and scurried out in small steps. When passing by the covered corridor, she saw Bailu and the others bustling around, kneeling on the ground with buckets, rags and other things, scrubbing the floor.
Nurse Li was nowhere to be seen. She felt strange and stepped in.
"Sister Bailu, you..."
Bailu turned her face. Her haggard appearance startled Caiyu. "What happened to your face?"
Bailu hadn't slept all night. There were dark circles under her eyes. Caiyu thought she looked like a cute bear from the Sichuan area and couldn't help curving the corners of her lips.
"Are you laughing at me?" Bailu's face turned green with anger. She scolded sharply, "You bitch! If it weren't for the traps you set last night, would we have been punished by the prince and made to clean up your mess all night without rest?"
Taoyao and the others also glared at Caiyu angrily. They hadn't slept all night and had been working hard cleaning up.
It was late at night and the dew was heavy. The whole corridor reeked of stinky water and rotten vegetables.
Although they were maids, they were not ordinary servants. Usually they served the master's daily life. They had really never done such dirty work before.
Thanks to Caiyu, they had experienced it for the first time in their lives.
It was simply unforgettable.
When Bailu and the others were being punished, Caiyu had already left for the side hall. So when she heard that Song Yinghuai had punished these people because of her, Caiyu was stunned.
But the next moment, she retorted coldly, "The root cause of this was that you tried to take over my room. As for the so - called haunted thing, heh! If you weren't guilty, why would you be afraid of ghosts and be scared by me?"
"You..."
"I warned you last night when you ran out of the door that it was dangerous here." Caiyu stated expressionlessly, "You turned a deaf ear to my warning and insisted on running to the covered corridor. Why are you blaming me now?"
Although the escape route of Bailu and the others was designed by her in advance, the skill of shifting the blame was not something only Bailu and the others could do.
She could do it too.
Bailu and the others were so angry that they rolled their eyes. "You deliberately set up traps here to frame us, and you still think you're in the right? If you hadn't framed us, we wouldn't have run into your traps no matter where we went!"
Caiyu calmly pursed her lips and shifted the blame:
"I like to study all sorts of ingenious tricks and set up some traps here for fun. Who would have known that you'd choose the path to hell instead of the path to heaven?"
Bailu's face changed abruptly.
This bitch actually dared to oppose her!
"Slut! Your mouth is so glib. No wonder the prince protects you and the old princess guards against you. I'll tear it to pieces today and see how you can seduce the prince in the future!"
Bailu gave a look, signaling Taoyao and the others to surround Caiyu.
Taoyao and the others had pent - up anger in their stomachs all night. Seeing this, they swarmed up.
They reached out their hands, trying to pull Caiyu's arms and hair.
Although Caiyu looked charming and delicate, she came from a military family. Her father and brother had spent half their lives on the battlefield. How could she be powerless?
She was faster than Taoyao. She preemptively pushed Xiangye away and slapped Taoyao in the face at the same time.
The two of them spun around on the spot and fell to the ground, crying out in pain in unison.
Caiyu was about to fight back against Zhuyue and Huaping who were pouncing on her, but a sudden idea popped into her mind, so she stopped her hands.
Zhuyue and Huaping finally grabbed her arms and held her down tightly.
Taoyao and Xiangye got up from the ground and joined in holding down the struggling Caiyu.
Seeing that Caiyu couldn't move, Bailu showed a venomous smile on her pretty face.
"Smash her mouth for me!" she commanded sharply.
Without hesitation, Taoyao picked up the rag on the ground and whipped Caiyu hard across the face!
"Bitch! Take this!"
"Slap!"
Caiyu groaned. A mark quickly appeared on her delicate face, turning faintly red. Her cheek instantly burned with pain, accompanied by the stench of stinky water.
Bailu and the others immediately burst out laughing gleefully.
"Hit her! Why stop?"
"You made us smell stinky water all night yesterday. Today let you feel our pain!"
Caiyu pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek and felt a trace of blood spreading in her mouth.
She suddenly turned her face, her eyes filled with cold frost, staring coldly at Bailu.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Bailu sneered. "Stare all you want. It's just for now. I'll gouge out your eyeballs in a while!"
Xiangye angrily raised her hand. "Let me go first. How dare she hit Sister Taoyao? In the Prince Yan's Mansion, no one but Sister Bailu has ever dared to hit us! I'll beat you to death!"
As she said that, Xiangye's arm swung hard towards Caiyu's face!
Caiyu struggled a couple of times but found it was in vain.
The slap was about to land on Caiyu's face again. She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes tightly, waiting for the pain to come.
However, the pain didn't come. Instead, a cry of pain rang in her ear.
Caiyu opened her eyes in confusion and found Xiangye covering her palm, with tears streaming down her face.
Han Fen was holding his sword horizontally. His hand was still halfway in the air, his eyebrows furrowed, looking solemn.
Caiyu saw that the sword was still in its scabbard. Presumably, he had blocked Xiangye's hand with the scabbard.
Han Fen actually came to save her?
Caiyu was always sensitive. Han Fen had always been cold to her, treating her like a transparent person. She never thought that he would show up here to save her today.
"Guard Han, what do you mean?" Bailu was the first to question. "Why did you hit Xiangye?"
Han Fen's eyebrows were so furrowed that they could almost crush a fly. He sheathed his sword. "Miss Bailu, don't wrong me. I was just passing by. It was Miss Xiangye who slapped my sword scabbard when she was attacking. I didn't hit anyone."
"You!" Bailu was extremely annoyed. Looking at Han Fen, she said, "What a coincidence, Guard Han. Instead of staying by the prince's side, you came to the maids' quarters for no reason and just happened to save Caiyu. This makes me can't help but suspect that you've been paying attention to her all the time and have feelings for her..."
What she said was clearly intended to drag the reputations of the two of them together.
In the Prince Yan's Mansion, it was common for the servants to fall in love with each other. With the master's blessing, they could get married.
But this was based on the premise that the two really had feelings for each other.
Bailu's act of "matching them up" out of the blue was obviously an attempt to ruin Caiyu's reputation so that she could never get into Song Yinghuai's bed again.
Caiyu clearly understood her intention and struggled to get out of the others' hands and was about to speak, but Han Fen said:
"I didn't come here for no reason. I came here to deliver a message, so I came here specially. Miss Bailu, be careful with your words. Although we are all servants in the mansion, I still have an official position. If you slander a court official casually, what crime do you think you should be punished for?"
Bailu's heart skipped a beat. She looked at Han Fen fearfully.
She had actually forgotten that although Guard Han had always been by Song Yinghuai's side, he was also a flag officer of the Yan Army, of the eighth - rank. She was just a maid and couldn't slander him casually.
It was quite possible that if he killed her on the spot, Song Yinghuai wouldn't even pursue the matter.
Bailu secretly swallowed a mouthful of saliva and stammered, "So you came to deliver a message... I was out of line. May I ask what orders you have, Guard Han?"
She winked at Taoyao and the others. They let go of Caiyu and stepped back to one side.