Sima Jiao started remembering things very early. When most children had no awareness of the world around them, he was already able to glean the information he wanted from the attitudes and words of those around him. At that time, he was still living in Shunhua Palace with his mother, Princess Ciyu. The vast Shunhua Palace was cold and desolate, and all the palace servants were like shadows.

Inside the palace were tall pillars, the floor was covered with soft carpets, hanging curtains swayed, and the incense burner was always burning a kind of incense that could make people drowsy. This was a luxurious cage in the imperial palace, imprisoning a woman who had already been driven mad, as well as Sima Jiao, an untimely product.

His identity was a deep taboo, but Sima Jiao knew that his mother was that crazy woman, Princess Ciyu, and his father was the master of this palace, His Majesty the Emperor. He also knew that these two were siblings.

He had overheard palace servants whispering behind their backs, talking about how outrageous the Emperor and the Princess were, how inauspicious and dirty the incestuous son was, and how he would surely come to no good end in the future.

He felt angry, so he had those two gossiping palace servants arrested and personally used a lamp stand cast in the shape of flowers and birds to gouge out their eyes and mouths, splattering himself with blood.

He was still so young at that time, but his tyrannical nature was already beginning to show. After discovering that killing people relieved the headache caused by his anger, Sima Jiao fell in love with this feeling. Those who angered him deserved to die, and it didn't matter if they died anyway, as new palace servants kept coming endlessly.

No one told him right from wrong or taught him principles. From birth, all he saw was a cage and a madwoman. When his mother Princess Ciyu was in her fits of madness, she didn't recognize him and ignored him.

Occasionally when she was lucid, she would look at him with disgust and fear in her eyes, muttering, "No wonder you're his child, you're crazy too, little lunatic!"

"When you grow up in the future, you will be a scourge, a scourge!" She would say this and then go mad again, trying to feed him poison to kill him, coming to his bedside in the middle of the night to try to smother him with a pillow.

But he never died, because he was smart and knew how to avoid this crazy woman, and Gao Mi watched over him at all times after discovering this, preventing the woman's actions.

Gao Mi was not yet the Grand Protector at that time. He had watched Princess Ciyu grow up and had always tried to ease their mother-son relationship. In the entire Shunhua Palace, only Gao Mi was good to him, but he would also always hold him and keep saying, "Your Highness was not like this before, she was kind and gentle, and will surely be very good to you. The reason she is like this now is only because she is ill. When her illness is cured, she will dote on you. You are her own son, she will definitely like you."

Sima Jiao did not believe these words. He had his own eyes to see and his own mind to think. That woman who should be called his mother was just afraid of him and hated him, not liking him at all, because he looked more and more like his father.

Everyone said he looked more and more like His Majesty, but Sima Jiao didn't like hearing that. He felt the same disgust for his biological father. Compared to a madman, he preferred to call that man a beast.

The beast would occasionally come to Shunhua Palace, and then that crazy woman would be dragged into the palace by him, making whimpering sounds. Sima Jiao was only a few years old at that time, but he had already witnessed this many times with his own eyes.

He would sit by the palace door and watch as the man and woman tore at each other, laughing and screaming. He felt that what he saw before him was inexplicably disgusting, and it reminded him of two dogs he had seen running out of the kennel outside Shunhua Palace, those beasts would also be like this.

Many years later, whenever he thought of the image of those two writhing bodies, he would have an uncontrollable feeling of nausea. When he grew up and became the emperor, he also had to possess countless beauties. Those beauties all had beautiful faces and bodies, and would make alluring soft sounds, all of which reminded him of the crazy woman who died in the great fire, subconsciously making him feel a splitting headache.

"Kill, drag them down and kill them." When he came back to his senses, he saw the attendants dragging the corpses out, leaving a long red trail on the ground.

One beautiful woman after another came before him, their faces all equally exquisite, dazzling to the eye, but what was revealed in those eyes was all different. In some people's eyes there was ambition, no matter how gently or coldly they pretended, the desire for power and for him was so clear in their eyes. In their eyes, he seemed to have become a stepping stone, a stepping stone to the pinnacle of power.

In the eyes of some beauties, there was fear and timidity. He could see the fear of death in their eyes. For these people, he was a murderous devil. Most people looked at him this way. Later on, he didn't even bother to kill this kind, because it was really boring.

There were also some beauties whose eyes carried more complex messages, a mixture of hatred or calculation or disgust and fawning. Each one made him unhappy to see.

In such a large palace, everyone's eyes were shrouded in a layer of gloom, like the lingering clouds above the palace that made it hard to breathe and made people feel irritable.

Going to Hexia was an accident, and seeing the famously beautiful Lady Liao was just a whim. But at first glance, Sima Jiao saw a pair of different eyes. The sky in those eyes was clear - he just didn't know how long it could stay clear.

She was a somewhat different beauty, at least, Sima Jiao had never seen such a lazy woman.

When he deliberately mentioned 'Sima Jiao' while concealing his identity, there was no fear in Liao Tingyan's eyes. To be exact, the emotion should be a little annoyance and a little curiosity. It was like a white cloud appearing in the clear sky, but as long as she was given a bowl of ice, that cloud would immediately be blown away by the wind.

Who knows if she would become as boring as those beauties once she entered the palace.

The day he unexpectedly revealed his identity, Sima Jiao thought he would see panic and fear in her eyes. As a result, he found that there was a look of startled doubt in her eyes. Other than that, she was very calm and could even space out in front of him.

She was different from others, without the 'ambition' of those beauties. She could be happy with anything given to her. Apart from eating and sleeping, she seemed to have no other pursuits, and she could even sleep beside him.

She might often scheme against him in her heart, but would shrink back at the slightest scare, pretending to be docile. However, her acting skills were poor, and she had a kind of unselfconscious naivety. But to say she was foolish, she wasn't truly foolish. At the very least, she saw through many things and never got tangled up over them.

Sima Jiao had never met someone who made him feel so comfortable. Lying beside her watching her munch on fruits, watching her sleep peacefully, inexplicably made him feel calm.

He liked this person and wanted to give her more things, to keep her unchanged by his side. Sima Jiao had never carefully considered what this feeling really was. As long as she didn't change, he would continue liking her this way.

But when she was captured, her life and death unknown, Sima Jiao discovered that amidst the boundless rage, he felt a hint of fear. He had never feared anyone or anything, but in that moment, he feared she might really be dead.

Seeing her again, she was still unchanged. No shadows in her eyes; even if it rained, it was a sun shower. Holding her in his arms, only then did Sima Jiao feel the dull ache in his head these past days slowly relax. She relaxed even faster than him, collapsing in the blink of an eye.

When Liao Tingyan lay on the bed pulling at her clothes saying "come on", Sima Jiao didn't react at all to what she meant. After all, while making this motion her eyes were filled with how troublesome it was and how much she wanted to sleep, not at all a seductive look. Sima Jiao had seen plenty of enticing, alluring gazes; who knew what she was expressing with eyes completely lacking in temptation.

Only after lying down did Sima Jiao suddenly realize, not looking at her eyes, her actions could probably be considered textbook seduction. His mood instantly grew complicated. He pushed her awake to inquire and received a silent but affirmative answer.

Sima Jiao: "..."

Sima Jiao recalled how he had dealt with those palace maids and beauties wanting to climb into his bed to offer themselves in the past, preparing to scare Liao Tingyan by telling her that many had actually died in his bedchamber. But lowering his head to look, he discovered Liao Tingyan, after waiting a long time without him continuing to speak, had fallen asleep again.

Sima Jiao, "...Quite bold."

He was the emperor, was it up to her to decide when to sleep and when not to?

Liao Tingyan didn't hear, only feeling her chest was a bit sore when she woke up in the morning. Sima Jiao asked her: "Were you that tired? Last night when I took off your clothes you didn't even wake."

Liao Tingyan was baffled, "Why would Your Majesty take off my clothes in the middle of the night instead of sleeping?"

Only after asking this did she realize something was off. She lowered her head to look at herself. "My clothes are properly on, they weren't taken off."

Sima Jiao: "Who told you to keep crying out 'it hurts it hurts', who could take them off then."

Liao Tingyan: I have no memory of this at all? With an injured arm it's just inconvenient to undress.

No, the biggest issue now wasn't that an injured arm made undressing inconvenient, but what was Sima Jiao trying to do taking off her clothes? She had probed him many times, wasn't he asexual or had sexual dysfunction? Suddenly getting frisky, what was this about?

Although Liao Tingyan wanted to figure it out, the news reported back by Jin De made her lose the intention to keep investigating.

"Your Majesty, people from the Lord of Southern Qin's manor have appeared nearby conducting a wide search for traces of us. Right now we still haven't left the Yaozhou area, once our whereabouts are discovered it will be dangerous."

Liao Tingyan saw Sima Jiao's expression instantly turn gloomy, completely different from the harmless look of slight dissatisfaction he had while talking to her just now. He said: "The cleanup wasn't thorough."

The gray-clothed attendants immediately all knelt down.

Sima Jiao stood up. "The other side's reaction is quite fast. Go prepare, abandon the carriage, we'll ride horses and take the other route I set before."

The group responded in the affirmative and dispersed one after another. Sima Jiao turned his head and pulled Liao Tingyan up, tidying her collar for her, his tone calm and casual. "I'll take you on my horse, don't be afraid."

The group's speed was indeed much faster riding on horseback. However, Chen Yun, who could be the original novel's male lead, was no simple character.

Two days later, he still found their tracks. The hundreds of men he dispatched surrounded Sima Jiao and the few dozen guards. By the time Sima Jiao escaped the encirclement, only a little over twenty men remained by his side.

Chen Yun pursued relentlessly, even personally leading men to chase them.

Seeing the gray-clothed guards beside them growing fewer and fewer, Sima Jiao raised his hand to draw the long sword from his horse. Liao Tingyan could only sit in front of him, pursing her lips as she watched the blood-splattered scene before her eyes.

Chen Yun raised his bow to shoot, but considering he might accidentally kill the female lead, had no choice but to throw down the bow and arrow. He also drew his sword, charging straight at Sima Jiao. In the blink of an eye, the two horses neared each other.

Everything happened too quickly, Liao Tingyan didn't see clearly. On the jolting horse, she only felt for a moment the world was spinning. Then people around were shouting in a messy din "Your Majesty!" "Master!"

Someone fell from their horse. Liao Tingyan didn't think, subconsciously grabbing the clothes of the person behind her. Only then did she realize the one who fell from the horse wasn't Sima Jiao, but Chen Yun.

Chen Yun had a stunned expression as he fell to the ground avoiding the horse hooves, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. An arrow was deeply embedded in his chest. Unlike ordinary arrows, this seemed to be a specially made miniature arrow.

Liao Tingyan didn't even react to how Chen Yun got shot, and didn't see who fired this small arrow. She immediately raised her head to look at Sima Jiao, but felt liquid dripping onto her hand.

Sima Jiao's chest was also soaked with a patch of blood. In a flash, Liao Tingyan recalled how just now Sima Jiao had suddenly turned his body, pressing her to the side.

Sima Jiao's face was expressionless as he held her a bit tighter. "Break out."

Only a few gray-clothed men beside them were still alive, and most of them were injured. Hearing Sima Jiao's words, the few men took the chance while Chen Yun fell from his horse and the crowd was in a panic to stake their lives killing a way out for Sima Jiao.

Sima Jiao's horse was a black horse, its jet-black coat as smooth as satin. It neighed and shook off the pursuers who had reacted, swiftly darting into the forest.

Author's note:

That, parents please avoid doing that in front of children, it can easily cause psychological trauma for the kids.