ITVCFITB CHAPTER 42

 Chapter 42: A New System Quest

Of course Li Mingjin couldn’t admit there was “medicine.”

He didn’t believe a spouse of less than two months could’ve already sniffed out his secret. Luo Shuyu must be bluffing, his clever little consort trying to pry him open.

He played dumb. “What medicine?”

Even with those wet, wounded eyes looking up at him, telling the whole truth would only make Luo Shuyu worry more. No, he couldn’t.

Luo Shuyu pouted. “How long do you plan to hide it? I don’t know exactly why you relapse, but you’ve clearly been taking something harmful for a long time. Don’t try to fool me, I’ve confirmed with Mother Consort and Shadow Three.”

Li Mingjin nearly tugged his bandage loose. His spouse could look pitiful and still stab where it hurt most. He clung to his denial. “And what did they say?”

If he could just weather this cross-examination, he might get away with it.

Tears still glimmered at the corner of Luo Shuyu’s eyes, but his head was crystal clear. He pressed on, point by point. “Fine, forget what they said. Start with this: why did you suddenly lash out yesterday? And why did your ‘illness’ swing from chills to fever so violently that even the physician couldn’t diagnose it?”

Why had he struck?

Li Mingjin couldn’t begin to answer without opening the door to everything else.

Truth was, he’d felt off even before leaving the house. Married life had been so smooth he’d almost forgotten the secret rotting at his core. He’d planned to grit his teeth through the day, then claim some business outside and ride out the episode elsewhere, coming home when it passed.

He’d thought he could control it. He was wrong. When it hit, his temper snapped to the quick, any slight set him ablaze.

At the drill grounds he’d gone to select a bow. Behind him a cluster of young officers were laughing. At first he ignored them until they brought up Shen Mingyun and Li Mingchun.

To others it was a bit of scandal-mongering about Fourth Prince’s supposed amorous adventures, nothing to do with him. But then one of them said, “What’s so special about the Luo household’s sons that princes can’t stop sniffing around?”

Li Mingjin’s face went cold. Li Mingchun, standing farther away, heard nothing; Li Mingjin, much closer, caught every word.

He dropped the bow, rage slamming into him, and cracked his whip toward the loudest mouth.

He didn’t care whose son it was.

Slander his spouse? In front of him? “Courting death!”

The whip fell once, twice, three times, merciless and hot.

Faces blanched. Some dropped to their knees to beg, some scrambled and tumbled to escape. They hadn’t expected a few filthy words to reach the Third Prince’s ears; only now did they realize their jokes were treasonous at best. But kneeling or fleeing, it made no difference. With Li Mingjin in the spiral stoked by the violent edge of his “illness”, the whip wouldn’t stop. Blood blossomed across uniforms as they scattered.

The ruckus drew all eyes. Emperor Tiansheng, seeing his son whipping men, ordered his strongest guards to disarm him and bind him. Dragged away, Li Mingjin still glared at the fallen, muscles bunched against the ropes like a maddened lion.

His thoughts blurred but one snarl remained: “You deserve to die.”

He was thrown in confinement. When his head cleared, his body was a map of wounds, every mark made by his own hands.

Soon after, they released him; his guards half-carried him home.

Now that Luo Shuyu was asking about the “medicine,” he didn’t dare answer. He was afraid… afraid of frightening him with that truth, afraid Luo Shuyu would forever see him as a man who destroyed himself.

“Your Highness?” Luo Shuyu caught the beat of hesitation, the flicker of fear. If it were any lesser matter, he wouldn’t press. But this was his life. Their future. He could not let it rot in silence. “I know you don’t want to talk about the trigger. Fine. But don’t hide anything about this illness from me again.”

Li Mingjin saw the faint red flood his eyes. He surrendered with a sigh. “Don’t cry. Don’t be angry. I’ll tell you. But… what did Mother Consort say?”

Luo Shuyu described his rushed visit to Consort Mei.

“You’re clever,” Li Mingjin said softly. “Smart enough to think of her.”

Luo Shuyu shot him a look. “I was terrified, and you’re laughing?”

“I’m not.”

“Then talk. Today, tomorrow, however long it takes. Or I’ll go ask your mother again.”

He tugged Luo Shuyu down beside him and laced their fingers together, gentle, careful of the wounds on his back. The warmth steadied him.

All these years, no one had asked. They’d simply called him a madman with a bad temper. His father among them. In that sense, he’d succeeded, he was alive.

“It started when I was eight,” he said.

His grip was light. It wasn’t enough for Luo Shuyu; he held back tighter, then loosened for fear of tugging a bandage. In his last life he’d never learned these pieces; now he wanted everything.

“As a child, I was counted bright. My tutors praised me often enough that Father began to notice. I had no idea how vicious the palace was. Mother Consort didn’t realize either until I began to outpace my brothers, and schemes crept toward Chang Le Palace. She understood then she couldn’t let me rise so openly. She hesitated… until the day I turned eight.

“I snuck out to play and bumped into Eldest and Second by the lake. I asked if I could join them; they agreed. ‘Hide-and-seek,’ they said. I was so pleased to have brothers to play with. I wedged myself into a rock crevice and waited. No one came. I was nodding off when a shadow shoved me into the lake. If Mother hadn’t secretly had me taught to swim, I’d have been a corpse.”

“Soaked through, I stumbled back to Chang Le. Mother took one look and knew. She silenced it and laid out the palace board and what her birth meant on that board. Three days later she brought out a recipe from Liang, had a draught made, and made me drink. From then on, I ‘relapsed’ at random, temper a live wire, hands quick to violence. After that, the shadows stopped hunting me. Everyone ‘knew’ I was ruined.”

He glanced at Luo Shuyu. “That’s it.”

He skated over ten-odd years of knife-edge living as if it were nothing. It left Luo Shuyu nearly breathless. Compared to that, his own housebound youth had been safe, even dull.

But the past was done. The medicine wasn’t. Before, he hadn’t known; now he did. They had to stop it.

“That prescription is toxic, isn’t it? Is there an antidote?”

Li Mingjin shook his head. “No. All medicine is poison in some part.”

“Then stop,” Luo Shuyu said, looking him straight in the eyes.

Something in him shifted. At this point his reputation as a brute was set; he didn’t need the drug to ‘prove’ it.

“I won’t take it again,” he said. “Since our wedding, I haven’t touched it.”

“What happens if you quit all at once?”

He hesitated. “It’s addictive. If I don’t take it… it will be uncomfortable. If I do take it… it’s also uncomfortable.”

“Who gave your mother the formula? Can we find a physician for an antidote?”

“I asked around in secret. The doctors all said the recipe was fine, a good one, even.”

“That’s stranger still. Then why this? Is your body different? We should ask your mother the whole truth. Your body’s been examined how many times, yet no one has ever found traces. Peculiar. Has the medicine always come through her?”

He nodded. “Always.”

So the source was still Consort Mei. One more question nagged. “Why not act the part? Why rely on a drug to hold the mask?”

“Because I hate blood,” he said simply. “I can’t even kill a chicken. Mother needed me truly violent to convince them. If I merely pretended, I couldn’t fool Father or the Empress.”

Pretending would fail. A drug left no seams to pick at. If anyone discovered it, they’d assume some concubine had tried to murder the prince; who would imagine a mother would feed poison to her own child?

In truth, there’d been no better way. Consort Mei was a princess sent from Liang. If her son had been merely average, fine. But he was born too well, an emperor’s bones. He’d drawn blood the moment he shimmered above his brothers. The only way to keep him alive was to make him small. To prove the smug adage: “Precocious children seldom grow great.”

Luo Shuyu had seen the essays Li Mingjin wrote, down to earth and sharply observed. Not like Shen Mingyun’s “borrowed” modernisms, but practical, rooted in Daxia. No wonder tutors had once favored him over Eldest and Crown Prince.

He threaded their fingers tighter. “I understand. And there’s something else. A ‘master’ once told me there’s a doctor called Hundred-Cures, Jie Baidu. If we can find him, he might be able to treat you.”

No antidote? Then they’d find a healer.

“I’ll send men to search,” Li Mingjin said, a bit ashamed for making him worry.

“As long as you don’t hide things from me,” Luo Shuyu said, “we’ll handle the rest.”

They’d barely finished when Qingwang announced: “Mister Chen requests an audience.”

Chen Rong?

The strategist Li Mingjin had recruited. Odd timing for a visit to the main courtyard.

They exchanged a glance and agreed to see him in the side hall. Luo Shuyu, curious, helped Li Mingjin up. The foot sprain had healed; the cuts and bruises were a nuisance, but tolerable if he didn’t twist or strain.

Chen Rong bowed. “Your Highness, Third Consort.”

“Rise,” Li Mingjin said, expression back to cool blank. “Sit. What brings you?”

“I heard Your Highness was injured and came to see if there was anything I could do.”

Hearing “injured” jogged Li Mingjin’s memory of what Luo Shuyu had said Hundred-Cures.

Chen Rong had been in the manor over a year, raising birds, painting, living more leisurely than his lord. Frail in body, well connected in friends.

Husband and spouse arrived at the same thought.

“Sir,” Luo Shuyu asked, “in your travels you may have heard of a physician called ‘Jie Baidu’ Hundred-Cures?”

“Jie Baidu?” Chen Rong’s eyes flickered; he didn’t pry. “When I wandered Liang some years back, I recall the name.”

“We need to find him,” Li Mingjin said.

“I’ll send a courier to friends in Liang to ask his whereabouts,” Chen Rong replied.

“And keep it between us,” Li Mingjin added, no fourth ear.

He meant don’t tell the other adviser, Liang Jianxue.

Luo Shuyu took the hint. Perhaps that Mister Liang had come in at someone else’s behest. Not everyone believed the Third Prince truly “ill.” Caution was a mutual language.

They kept Chen for supper, something that clearly surprised him. He’d stayed in the household a long while but never eaten at the same table. Quietly, he watched how the young couple moved around each other, the unthinking intimacy. No wonder Li Mingjin could mention Hundred-Cures openly before Luo Shuyu.

After dinner, Chen returned to his quarters.

Luo Shuyu brought out the zither he’d dusted off yesterday and played to ease Li Mingjin’s mind. If not for the stitches, Li Mingjin might’ve answered with a song of his own.

Tonight, they shared a bed. The moment they lay down, a hand started wandering.

“Your Highness,” Luo Shuyu warned, catching it.

“I’ll just… hold,” Li Mingjin said with grave dignity.

“No.” You’re injured.

“…Fine.”

---

While Li Mingjin recuperated, Shen Mingyun, true to form, was brought into the Fourth Prince’s manor as a concubine. Titles meant nothing to him but freedom did.

Leaving the Luo estate meant leaving Luo Renshou’s rites-and-rules and no longer worrying his cousin Luo Shumo would suddenly turn into a beast and pin him to a bed.

He sailed into Fourth Prince’s household cheerful as spring. Proper wife, concubine, who cared? In the modern world marriage could end in divorce. If things soured, he could walk. For now, Fourth Prince was his type; they’d pledged “one pair for life,” all very romantic.

A few days later, the Zhou envoy arrived early with a Zhou princess in tow.

At the same time, the system issued Shen Mingyun a new quest:

【Create an opportunity for Third Prince Li Mingjin to meet the Zhou Princess, and engineer a marriage—she must enter his household as a co-equal wife.】

Shen Mingyun: “Why is this quest about the Third Prince again?”

System: “Priority five stars. Please proceed promptly.”

Shen Mingyun: “What’s the point of marrying him to a Zhou princess?”

System: “…” Pointless? Hardly.

---

Author’s note:
Third Prince: “Heaven and earth can testify. You know my depths, I know your… dimensions. We’re the real heaven-made pair!”
Luo Shuyu: “…”

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