Can't a princess ascend the throne?

Chapter 109: Friend or Foe?

He piled all these people into a small mountain, clapped his hands, straightened up, and was startled by the person who suddenly appeared in front of him.

Wasn't that Wang Mo staring straight at him? Was she not asleep?

Jiu Que instinctively tightened her grip on the rope. Wang Mo didn't know martial arts, and with her strength, she could easily tie her up. But at this moment, she felt that Wang Mo's expression was a bit strange. Did Wang Mo hate her? Otherwise, why would she have that expression? It seemed to be a mixture of disgust and hatred, mixed with excitement, and even... joy?
So Wang Mo is very happy right now? What's she happy about?
Jiu Que hesitated, unsure whether to speak. But Wang Mo had already raised his dark eyes, staring at Jiu Que with a complicated expression.

"You made this, didn't you? Was it that pot of food?" But Yang Hui didn't eat much, yet he still felt dizzy.

Seeing that Wang Mo meant no harm, Jiu Que considered the physical condition of both parties, sighed, and decided not to hide anything anymore. Her eyes fell on the pot of herbal soup that had been simmering.

Wang Mo also looked over and suddenly realized what was going on.

"So this is the sleeping potion. So, Doctor Xue is in cahoots with you too?"

"of course."

No wonder Doctor Xue had been gathering so many herbs from the mountain these past few days; it turned out they were all for Yang Hui and his group. Poor thing, they thought they'd finally found a trustworthy doctor, but perhaps they'd been living in a position of power for too long and were no longer able to understand the thoughts of ordinary people. Had they forgotten that Doctor Xue and his companions were innocent passersby who had been dragged here? Why would they give up their own comfortable lives to come to this godforsaken place?
How ridiculous!

Wang Mo actually laughed. Under Jiu Que's strange gaze, she rubbed her face hard, calmed down, and firmly stated.

"I'll help you. What do you need? I know this place better than you do."

"Does Sister Wang know where the things I brought with me are? I need to prove my identity."

“I’ll get it for you. When you came, I took off all the things that were too conspicuous from your body and buried them in the cave. I’ll go now.”

Wang Mo moved with surprising speed. Before Jiu Que could react, he had already hurriedly left, returning a moment later with a small bundle in his hand. Jiu Que opened it and saw that it was indeed something he had brought with him.

"Thank you, Sister Wang, but you and Yang Hui aren't..." She vaguely remembered hearing the older men and women say that Wang Mo and Yang Hui were a couple. Moreover, they seemed to be from the same village, so their relationship should be stronger than hers, who had only been there for a few days. Why would they choose to help her now? Not only now, but when Jiu Que first arrived at this mine, it must have been Wang Mo who removed all her valuables and covered her with a thick layer of mud to prevent her from being targeted by the miners while she was unconscious.

So why would Wang Mo help her? Jiu Que needed to be sure that he was a trustworthy person; otherwise, given the unknown factors, she would have to tie him up too.

Wang Mo paused for a moment, then spoke briefly.

"Perhaps we were just unlucky. Our whole village was located at the foot of this mountain. Although there weren't many people, we lived a relatively peaceful life. But one day, the government officials moved everyone in our village into the mountains, forcing everyone, regardless of age or gender, to mine. My father and brothers were worked to death. Yang Hui was also exhausted at that time. He was orphaned at a young age, and it was the collective effort of our village that raised him. But later, he climbed the social ladder by getting ahead of the overseers, and in order to excel, he harmed countless people! Among them were even our village's elders and juniors. Gradually, his position rose higher and higher, and the number of people he persecuted to death increased. I suppose you've already seen those innocent girls in the cave? We are just ordinary people. It's one thing if we can't unite to resist, but why betray us? To put it another way, did he really have to let those innocent people die from exhaustion? Did he really have to harm those poor girls?"

Jiu Que had already suspected this might be a tragic story, but after hearing the other person's brief account, she still felt a heavy weight in her heart. Unbeknownst to them, countless villages and innocent people throughout Qianzhou had been persecuted. They could have lived peaceful and happy lives, but were forced to participate in the power struggles of those powerful figures. Their lives might have been extremely ordinary, perhaps even insignificant in the eyes of those powerful individuals. But they too deserved the right to live!
However, Jiu Que then considered another possibility: was Yang Hui secretly biding his time? After all, only if he prospered could Wang Mo live a good life. Among the cooks, Wang Mo was the only young woman; the rest were elderly women. Wasn't this precisely because of Yang Hui's care?
"Sister Wang, have you ever considered that Yang Hui might have deliberately climbed to this position to protect you?"

"what!"

Wang Mo gave a sarcastic smile.

“I used to think that way too, but not anymore. Yang Hui may have initially thought that he was only contacting those supervisors for my sake. But money can corrupt people's hearts. When he experienced power that he had never experienced before, he changed.”

"Perhaps all men are like this. When he finds that many people agree with and support him with just a casual remark, when he finds that he can control the life and death of others with just a flick of his finger, he is no longer the Brother Yang I know, but Yang Hui who is unable to extricate himself from the power to control the life and death of others!"

"Do you think he helped me because of our past relationship? No, he helped me just to keep an object that could witness his rise to power. After all, if there's no one to witness his transformation from a penniless nobody to the now-powerful Supervisor Yang, wouldn't he miss out on a lot of the fun in life?"

"...His interest is a bit..."

"It's disgusting, isn't it? But what can I do? I'm the one who knows him best. Maybe this is the price I pay for surviving. Every day, looking at him, I wanted to poison him with the food I cooked! But he was too cautious. Perhaps knowing he was hated, he always had the overseers eat with him. But if you observed closely, you would see that although they sat at the same table, he would always use drinking or talking as an excuse to delay, waiting until everyone else had eaten and seemed fine before he would even pick up his chopsticks. So I couldn't poison him at all, and killing him was too difficult. I'm not very strong, and he would never stay in a place with a stranger while in a daze. Even if I wanted to secretly stab him, I couldn't. And I lived like this, worse than death, for two whole years!"

(End of this chapter)