27. Grateful and Slightly Lethal

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For the next few days, Gao Le princess residence was peaceful. It wasn't the eerie kind of peace, nor the high-tensioned one.

Yin Hua Lei was quiet because for one, her injury inhibited her movements. And second, she had a lot to think of.

She felt that she was seeing her world for the first time without a veil hindering her eyesight. She admitted that the veil was first pierced when she realized that she was the villainess but now...

It was as though she finally broke free from the clutches of the storyline. An invigorating sense of liberation.

Why didn't she feel this way during that rainy night months ago? She wondered that.

It must have been because her only focus back then was to save her family. She kept a close eye on Xia Yu Heng and Bai Chen Rong because she was afraid.

She was unsecured and almost paranoid that she might not be able to protect her family if the two got fed up with her and decided to make a move.

Now, she understood that her worldview was truly limited.

Yes, those two were the so-called main leads but this world was as true as it could be. And it certainly wasn't just revolving around two individuals.

All the people here were of flesh and blood, they had emotions and had differing perspectives. They all certainly weren't just blotches of ink on paper and couldn't be described by just a few lines of flowery words.

While it was true that the ninth prince and his wangfei received a lot of privileges for being the chosen ones, they still had the free will to do whatever they wanted. The same for all the other characters.

Yin Hua Lei struggled not to be controlled by the plot but she was still constrained because she minded it too much. It was a paradox in itself.

Her line of thinking became classified into the 'plot and everything else that wasn't in it.'

Life was really a series of lessons.

Beyond the storyline, there were still people that existed and lived their lives according to their own judgment. It was because she unconsciously juxtaposed her reality with the story line of the novel that it was as though she was seeing things from inside a long tunnel.

Nevertheless, she was glad that she saw the plot. Her mistake was to be too caught up in avoiding it when what she could have done was just to live her life as it was.

She should have sooner realized that she could do whatever she wanted and the plot was an illusion that was trapping her and narrowing her choices.

Still, it was never too late.

"Mistress, are you feeling uncomfortable somewhere?"

Yin Hua Lei was sitting by the window.

Xin Tao noticed that her master had been spacing out for quite some time so the maidservant had to ask.

"Hmm?" Her gaze slowly focused on the two girls older than her by a few years. "Just thinking..."

"... this princess is grateful for having you both and all the brothers and sisters we have in this palace."

Yin Hua Lei's lashes lowered as she looked down on her right wrist.

"If not for you... I'd long be gone. Not just this time, but all the times in the past when I did something quite foolish."

She looked up at the Xin sisters, only to see them tearing up even though she didn't fully understand why. She was merely saying the truth.

"I must say thank you for standing with me until now... through thick and thin, as the seasons changed all these years."

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