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  “Well not all, maybe…… it was just me and Cole.” Lea looked down with a bitter smile and continued, “When I was little, everyone asked me to establish a good rapport with my eldest brother, but nobody knew that I actually liked my second eldest brother, Cole, the most. My eldest brother always had a straight face on and every time we met, he would ask me how much of the esoterica I have memorized, whether my deduction skills have improved or how much of the medicine and medical cases I have learned. But Cole was different, every time he came back from the outside, he would bring me new toys, tell me interesting stories and sneak out with me to play…… So, I was closer with Cole than my eldest brother.”


  Gu Mengmeng did not interrupt Lea because what actually happened in his past was like Pandora’s box, filled with unknowns.

  If he was finally willing to open it up, even if it was the devil that jumped out in the end, Gu Mengmeng would now have the courage to hug Lea and face everything together with him.

  Lea kissed on Gu Mengmeng’s forehead, as though it was the only way that could make him have the courage to continue, “But only until he pushed me onto the bed of our father’s concubine and dashed in with our father and all the tribe elders. That was when I found out that I was being used by my second brother, whom I loved the most. In a fit of anger, our father said he would kill me, but Cole held onto his legs and begged for his pardon with tears all over his face, asking father to spare my life as we were father and son after all. Banishment…… was the result for me, while Cole ended up with a reputation of being loyal to his father and caring for his brother.”


  Gu Mengmeng raised up her hand and gently stroked onto the wrinkle on Lea’s frown. She asked, “If there was really something between you and the concubine, there will surely be a mark. Since you didn’t do it, you should have just explain to your father, the truth would be revealed by just checking the concubine’s body.”


  Lea held onto Gu Mengmeng’s hand lightly, pulled it near his lips and kissed it. He said, “Idiot, whether there was something between me and the concubine was not the point at all, what was important was that the entire tribe’s noble elders and my father saw me not properly dressed lying on the concubine’s bed. This was enough to put my father to shame. As for what actually happened between me and her, or what did not happen, nobody cares.”


  Gu Mengmeng felt a sharp pain in her heart seeing the apathy in Lea’s eyes.

  Lea’s own father, valuing his face over his son.

  How distorted.

  Lea sighed and continued, “Ninth Highness changed from the phrase for Sauder’s successor for religious authority to the shame of someone that had an affair with his father’s concubine and should be engulfed by the flame devil. I was banished, whipped and bullied but I still stubbornly insisted on coming back to correct everything. I cried on how I was being framed, I never committed such things! But in exchange, I only received even more cruel and brutal banishment. After that, I met Cole in the forest on the exterior of Sauder, he was looking for me with my favorite food. He said…… He just came to see how shabby the privileged one with religious authority and everyone’s love on was now.”


  Gu Mengmeng frowned, she felt heartache for Lea and hugged onto his arm, she said, “Is he a psychopath? Why did he hurt you like this?”


  Lea smiled bitterly and said, “I asked him the same question, why did him frame me. He just replied with ‘Who asked you to be the Ninth Highness’. I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but I do now. The precious stone lands its innocent possessor in jail.”