Chapter 249 - 247 I Should Clearly Be the Number One Beauty
Luo Wanzhao pulled out a golden hairpin and stirred the powder in the teapot evenly. "Do you think Shen Yinning came back from that hellish place, Gan State, so easily? I heard the Prince say that on the night before her exile, she climbed into the Crown Prince’s bed. In just one night, she made the Crown Prince remember her fondly for three years, which is why he arranged for her to marry Gao Zheng. Then, using Gao Zheng, he brought her back to the Capital. After her return, she served as the Crown Prince’s Forbidden Fruit for an entire year. The Crown Prince protected her, and despite the Crown Princess Consort’s efforts, she couldn’t catch her!"
She covered the teapot, inserted the golden hairpin back into her coiffure, and continued, "Back when the Shen Guogong Mansion hadn’t yet collapsed, Shen Yinning and the Prince were childhood sweethearts and destined to marry. Who would have thought the Crown Prince would step in and steal her away? I think the Crown Prince might indeed feel something special for Shen Yinning. This ’climbing into bed’ affair might not have been her acting alone—it’s likely the Crown Prince went along with it as well."
Luo Wanxiang listened, growing more and more dumbfounded.
The Crown Prince—someone who appeared as cold, lofty, and unattainable, a figure of staunch integrity and self-restrained propriety—just looking at him filled her with both reverence and unease.
Yet such a Crown Prince secretly did something as despicable as stealing another man’s wife?
And the woman in question was none other than Shen Yinning...
The one who was even more beautiful than her and also one of Xue Mianmian’s closest friends.
Recalling how, at tonight’s banquet, the Crown Prince finished Shen Yinning’s half-empty glass of wine, Luo Wanxiang was almost seventy or eighty percent convinced.
Her tone took on a note of bitterness: "But Shen Yinning has done all these things. As the daughter of a condemned official, her reputation is utterly ruined, and her unclear entanglements with other men make her incomparable to us—noble, spotless girls of good families. Surely the Crown Prince just sees her as a passing dalliance, doesn’t he?"
"Xiang’er, don’t forget that four years ago, given our status, we wouldn’t have even been able to meet her. It was her father and brothers’ rebellion that made us seem noble compared to her. Now, though she’s a fallen orphan, her connections with the Princes remain. Do you remember how the Princely Heir of the Duke Mansion protected her?"
Luo Wanxiang scoffed, "What can she do besides enticing men with her face?! Spending all her time among men, she has no semblance of a proper lady! I, for one, look down on her!"
"Enough, let’s leave quickly before she returns."