She didn't look like someone who had been caught, and the mask of disguise was very powerful, until... everyone left and only she and the Ten Elders stayed behind tacitly.
The door to the conference room was closed from the outside.
“Father…” Sai Lan took a step forward, but before she could open her mouth, the man in front of her suddenly stood up and slapped her in the face.
"Snap!" A crisp sound was heard, fast and fierce.
If there were still people outside who hadn’t left in time, they would have heard the slapping sound inside and guessed what happened inside…
Sai Lan covered half of her face, with the corners of her red lips raised, looking both morbid and stunningly beautiful.
She slowly raised her head, her eyes were like a pool of water under the light, reflecting the vicious and cruel face of the old man in gray robe.
That is a side that the outside world rarely sees.
Sai Lan had seen the violence beneath his calm exterior many times since she was a child, as if the woman often had scars on her face when she was a child. Whenever she saw them, she would always cover them up by saying that she had accidentally hit them.
However, one night she heard suppressed screams at home.
She was still very young at that time.
It's raining outside.
The sound of the rain hitting the window, accompanied by the woman's screams for mercy in the wind and rain, sounded like a cannibalistic scene in a fairy tale.
She curled up in bed holding her doll and waited for a long time but the screaming didn't stop until she mustered up the courage to go out and see if it was her mother crying.
Her brother found her, looked at her with melancholy eyes, stopped her at the stairs, took her back to the room and gently coaxed her to sleep.
She relied on her brother wholeheartedly and soon fell asleep. In the dream, there was no heavy rain or women's screams... only the gentle caress of her brother and the fairy tale he told her.
In the story, the princess is everyone's favorite, has a happy family, parents and brother who love her, and lovely and kind people...
She was content in the story.
until…
When he woke up the next day, the woman was dead.
Just like the uncool side of his father, just as violent, cold and vicious as it is now.
The grey-robed old man pinched her chin with his shriveled but strong hands, turned her face towards himself, and looked down at her.
"Do you think Mu Qingtian will let you go just like that?"
Sai Lan raised her head as if she didn't feel any pain, and tried to look at his face. It was as if she had inhaled a pleasant secret medicine. Her trachea was clamped, and she spoke incoherently, "...Of course not. Moody is his lifeblood. If I touched Moody and he found out, he would never let me go."
"Hmph." The sharp eyes of the Ten Elders swept across her face, across the way she smiled despite her distorted face in pain, as if they were holding a piece of trash and letting go with disgust: "Incompetent! You've lived for decades in vain."
Sai Lan felt pain in her neck muscles from being swung by him, but she turned her head firmly to look at him again, half-closed her trembling eyelashes, raised her red lips and murmured softly, "But father, aren't you tired of him coveting your position again and again as a side branch? I just created the right opportunity for you, and we should start to clean up the mess."
"We?" The Tenth Elder seemed to have heard the funniest joke in the world. His disdainful eyes seemed to be asking her, "How dare you talk to me about we?"
Sai Lan pinched her fingertips and changed her words: "It's not us, it's me."
The grey-robed old man slowly regained his aloofness and nonchalant attitude, as if nothing in the world could be as detached as his eyes. (End of this chapter)