At dawn, Leng Ruo Li returned to the General's mansion after arduous efforts. Everyone in the mansion was still fast asleep.
Leng Ruo Li had been missing from the mansion for three days since she was drugged and taken out of the capital that night. Madam Liu and her daughter must have thought she was already dead and were secretly laughing in their dreams.
At this moment, she truly looked forward to seeing Madam Liu and her daughter and witnessing their expressions upon seeing her alive and returned.
Just then, a sneaky figure emerged from the entrance of the courtyard that Leng Ruo Li had passed.
Startled, Leng Ruo Li quickly hid in the flowerbed by the roadside and held her breath.
Soon, the man noticed something unusual. He cast a sinister glance around the corners outside the courtyard entrance. After confirming that no one had seen him, he swaggered away.
A moment later, he still felt uneasy and doubled back for another look. Seeing no one, he finally left with peace of mind.
Leng Ruo Li had anticipated his return halfway, so she had remained still in the flowerbed.
After a long while, Leng Ruo Li, certain that the man would not return, slowly emerged from the flowerbed.
She had already clearly seen the man's face. This person was Steward Lin from the mansion, the captain in charge of the mansion's security. The courtyard he had just emerged from was indeed Consort Liu's Yuhua Courtyard.
A steward sneaking into a consort's courtyard in the middle of the night could only mean trouble.
A moment later, Leng Ruo Li immediately returned to the secluded small courtyard where the original owner had lived.
The moment she saw the original owner's residence, she was stunned.
She stepped inside, her eyes wide with disbelief at everything before her.
It was a courtyard that had fallen into disrepair. The ground was littered with broken tiles and weeds, and even the bricks forming the walls were overgrown with all sorts of vegetation.
Beneath the partially collapsed walls were numerous dog holes of varying sizes, leaving the entire wall in a precarious state, like a trembling elderly person, easily blown down by a gust of wind, posing a significant safety hazard.
The entire courtyard resembled a haunted house from a modern movie.
Ever since the original owner's father was sent by the current Emperor to guard the border eight years ago, he had never returned. The original owner could not get any news of her father, and Madam Liu and her daughter became even more reckless in the mansion.
Because Leng Ruo Li had been poisoned for a long time, she gradually became a foolish and ugly woman. Later, Leng Ruo Shuang drove Leng Ruo Li out of Mingyue Courtyard, and she moved into this dilapidated Qingfeng Courtyard.
From then on, Leng Ruo Li's life was worse than that of a dog. Madam Liu and her daughter only gave Leng Ruo Li leftovers to eat once a day, and they often took out their anger on her. The servants in the mansion no longer respected this legitimate eldest daughter, resorting to hitting and scolding her.
Even more outrageous, Madam Liu and her daughter sent people to drug Leng Ruo Li and take her out of the capital to be killed.
Thinking about the actions of Madam Liu and her daughter made her feel utterly insane.
She walked directly to the main house of the courtyard and violently pushed open the door. A musty smell assaulted her nostrils. The room was in disarray. Every corner of the room had been ransacked. Even the original owner's only worn quilt had been thrown onto the ground and ruined.
At this moment, the moonlight playfully pierced through the holes in the roof, illuminating her room, merely to bear witness to her broken, dilapidated dwelling.
The scene inside the room was as if bandits had ransacked it.
Leng Ruo Li let out a cold laugh.
Her eyes were filled with anger, and she suppressed the urge to beat Madam Liu and her daughter.
That mother and daughter were truly wicked. If the original owner's father knew that his daughter was often abused by Madam Liu and her daughter, given his doting affection for the original owner, he would surely have flayed them alive.
However—
"Since Heaven has allowed me to be reborn as Leng Ruo Li, there is no need for others to avenge her."
She looked coldly at the messy scene in the room and silently vowed that she would not let anyone who had bullied the original owner off the hook.
—
Early in the morning, Leng Ruo Shuang, dressed in a pink gauze skirt, rushed into her Qingfeng Courtyard with her wet nurse, Nanny Liu, and her maid, Xiao Cui.
"Nanny Liu, Xiao Cui, today I want you to thoroughly search the entire Qingfeng Courtyard again. You must find that double phoenix patterned gilded silver hairpin, do you understand?" Leng Ruo Shuang commanded loudly.
"Yes, Miss."
Nanny Liu and Xiao Cui responded in unison.
With that, Leng Ruo Shuang forcefully pushed open the door and swaggered into Leng Ruo Li's room with her two servants, rummaging through the dressing table in the original owner's room again from top to bottom.
However, Leng Ruo Shuang still could not find the double phoenix patterned gilded silver hairpin she wanted.
Enraged, she picked up a wooden stool nearby.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
She smashed it repeatedly against the already dilapidated dressing table.
Nanny Liu and Xiao Cui, startled by the commotion, dared not step forward to dissuade her, fearing they might provoke this cruel young lady.
Soon, the old dressing table couldn't withstand the blows and fell apart.
But Leng Ruo Shuang continued to utter malicious words.
"Leng Ruo Li, that slut, where did she hide that double phoenix patterned gilded silver hairpin?"
In the days since Leng Ruo Li's disappearance, she had searched Leng Ruo Li's room several times but could not find what she wanted.
Nanny Liu and Xiao Cui, like Leng Ruo Shuang, had found nothing.
They had accompanied Leng Ruo Shuang to Qingfeng Courtyard several times and hadn't even seen a decent piece of jewelry, let alone that double phoenix patterned gilded silver hairpin.
They also felt quite dejected.
Leng Ruo Li was, after all, a legitimate daughter of the General's mansion, yet she lived a life worse than theirs, the servants.
"What are you two spacing out for? Did you find that double phoenix patterned gilded silver hairpin?" Leng Ruo Shuang asked coldly.
"Reporting to Miss, we did not,"
Nanny Liu and Xiao Cui exchanged glances and replied in unison.
Hearing this, Leng Ruo Shuang's anger surged "whoosh" to the top of her head. "Have you two not searched carefully? Where could that foolish and ugly Leng Ruo Li possibly hide it?" Leng Ruo Shuang said in exasperation.
That double phoenix patterned gilded silver hairpin was the token of the engagement between Prince Qing and Leng Ruo Li, bestowed by the Empress back then.
Now that Leng Ruo Li was missing, this double phoenix patterned gilded silver hairpin belonged to her, Leng Ruo Shuang.
The engagement between Leng Ruo Li and Prince Qing should also be replaced by her.
Meanwhile, Leng Ruo Li, hiding in the system space, knew that Leng Ruo Shuang had arrived the moment she stepped into Qingfeng Courtyard.
However, Leng Ruo Li did not reveal herself immediately. Instead, she watched the three people in the room with cold eyes through the mirror in the system space.
She was curious about their purpose in ransacking the original owner's room.
However, what left Leng Ruo Li speechless was that the item Leng Ruo Shuang was looking for was the double phoenix patterned gilded silver hairpin, which was the engagement token given by the Empress to Prince Qing and Leng Ruo Li at the original owner's birth, and it was a very ordinary hairpin.
What did Leng Ruo Shuang want with that double phoenix patterned gilded silver hairpin? It wasn't valuable.
Did she want to replace the original owner and marry Prince Qing?
That made sense, as that Prince Qing and her illegitimate sister had long been secretly involved.
"Tsk tsk—"
This Leng Ruo Shuang was truly shameless.
The entire capital knew that Leng Ruo Li and Jun Mo Yao had been engaged since childhood.
As a sister, secretly snatching her sister's man, wasn't she afraid of public condemnation?
Suddenly, Leng Ruo Li thought of a good way to teach them a lesson.
Didn't she have a few devil masks in her system space?
These devil masks were casually thrown into the system space after she and her friends attended a Halloween party.
She hadn't expected them to be useful this time.
Subsequently, Leng Ruo Li put on one of the ghost masks and flashed behind the screen in the room.
The early morning sun had not yet shone into her room, and it was still dark inside.
Leng Ruo Shuang was too engrossed in searching for what she wanted and did not notice the anomaly in the room.
Suddenly—
Xiao Cui saw a constantly swaying dark shadow behind the screen and immediately trembled all over, her face turning pale.
"Ah—"
Leng Ruo Shuang and Nanny Liu heard Xiao Cui's scream and looked up curiously. At a glance, they saw the ferocious shadow behind the screen.
"Ah— a ghost—"
Leng Ruo Shuang turned to run out of the room, but comically, she tripped over something she had knocked to the ground, falling face-first.
She endured the pain, got up, trembling all over, pointed at the ghost shadow behind the screen, and shouted loudly, "Who exactly are you? Come out! Stop playing these tricks!"
"Second sister, are you talking to me?"
Leng Ruo Li slowly emerged from behind the screen.
Leng Ruo Shuang and her two servants screamed upon seeing her.
"Ah— a ghost—"
Nanny Liu and Xiao Cui abandoned Leng Ruo Shuang and fled Qingfeng Courtyard.
As for Leng Ruo Shuang, she was still in pain from her fall. Frightened by Leng Ruo Li, she fell three more times while fleeing before finally escaping Qingfeng Courtyard.