Like Pearl and Jade

Chapter 65

"Your Majesty, careful of the stairs." He Ming held a lantern to illuminate the path ahead. Gu Ru Jiu smelled a sour odor and used a handkerchief to cover her nose.

But this place was much cleaner than she had imagined—no dirty water on the floor or mosquitoes flying everywhere. After a few steps, she saw Sima Xiang whose face was covered in dirt and who was in tattered clothes.

In her memories, Sima Xiang was an extremely beautiful woman. She almost stilled at seeing this sorry figure whose appearance could not be made out.

The room was extremely humid and not pleasing to the nose. She did not need to think to know how painful it was for a miss from an aristocratic family who had never worked a day in her life to be imprisoned here.

She had not brought her personal servant girls because she did not want them to see this. Bai Xian, who came in with her, fanned her with a fan. He whispered, " Your Majesty, the prison is hot. You should not say for long."

"No wonder people started cleaning the cell in the morning. It's because someone important like you was coming." Sima Xiang was extremely embarrassed when she first saw Gu Ru Jiu. But when she saw the other's grand clothing and how she sat at an elegant table, someone fanning her, someone holding a pot, and someone coming with an incense pot, her embarrassment turned to endless hate. "You are finally satisfied after my family has become like this?"

"What your family has become has nothing to do with me." Gu Ru Jiu suddenly felt that her trip here was meaningless. Maybe she came here with negative thoughts, or rather, she had no sympathy for Sima Xiang's outcome.

After learning the other once wanted her life, her negative feelings spread and she had a thought of "coming to see the other's ending."

But when she finally saw the other, this woman of seventeen mad and crazy, she felt all this was meaningless.

A person who was fated to not have a good outcome would be the same whether she visited or not. She did not feel this trip was one to relieve her hatred.

Seeing Gu Ru Jiu's tranquil gaze, Sima Xiang suddenly calmed. She sat in the corner and hugged her knees. She said after a moment, "You came to see how sorry of a state I am in?"

"It was like that." Gu Ru Jiu looked down at her hands. "But after seeing you, I feel I shouldn't have come."

"How could you not come?" Sima Xiang sneered. "Didn't the emperor imprison me here to curry favour with you? If you had not come, wouldn't his efforts have been in vain?"

Gu Ru Jiu did not argue with her words and said, "Yes, I did not want to waste his efforts so I came. A person treats me so—I cannot bear to let him down."

"Even if the man is vicious, has hands covered in blood, and is extremely ambitious?" Sima Xiang looked mockingly at the well-dressed beauty next to her. "You have never thought that one day, he will treat you the same?"

Outside the hall, Jin Yang stopped on the stone stairs. He stood in the dark entrance, looking at the woman under the candlelight, and lost the courage to walk closer.

Maybe, in his heart, he was still slightly cautious about this love.

Gu Ru Jiu looked at Sima Xiang and shook her head silently with a smile.

"Why are you smiling?" Sima Xiang saw her smile and was irritated. She felt the other was laughing at her.

"I laugh at your not understanding feelings." Gu Ru Jiu's smile slowly spread. "You can sense if someone is true or false towards you if you want to. Unless, no one has ever been good or sincere towards you."