Jin Mulan had never been a woman who reacted with fear or hostility. She was calm. Composed. Measured. This time had been different. Her instincts had become sharp and defensive.
Hypervigilant. It was a small change, one that most people would never have noticed. But Luo He did. As he watched her disappear into the mansion, his expression remained calm.
His eyes darkened slightly. The trauma had not faded. It had simply buried itself deeper within her heart, where it festered in darkness, changing her in ways that were only beginning to surface.
He understood what no one else could see. The event had left its mark. Not on her body. On her mind. In her instincts.
She was becoming someone different.
Someone afraid.
And Luo He knew exactly why. He would address this eventually. But first, there were emperors to assist. Rebellions to resolve. A prince to continue breaking.
The reckoning with Jin Mulan's wounds would have to wait. At least for now.
That night, Luo He explained everything that had happened to Jin Mulan to Ning Jia and to Jin Mulan's parents. They were horrified by what they heard.
Only Count Jin, Madam Jin, Ning Jia, Jin Mulan, and Luo He remained in this room. The doors were closed. The servants were dismissed. And the sea shell ensured silence.
Jin Quan frowned, sensing the weight of what was about to unfold. "What just happened?" He asked uneasily. Luo He did not answer immediately. He glanced at Jin Mulan, who sat quietly beside him.
Her eyes were lowered, her entire body carrying the tension of someone who had survived something unspeakable.
Finally, he spoke.
"Mulan was attacked during our stay in the Wu Kingdom." He said calmly.
The words struck the room like thunder. Madam Jin's face instantly lost all color. The blood drained from her cheeks, leaving her pale as death it self.
"Attacked?" Count Jin slowly stood, his entire body going rigid with the kind of fury that comes from paternal protection activated. "By whom?" He asked in rage
"Prince Lian Luo." Luo He replied calmly, his tone betraying nothing. The wooden table cracked beneath Jin Quan's palm. A sudden, violent response that revealed the depth of his rage.
"That bastard... Who ever he is, I will personally strangle him to death." His voice shook with barely contained fury.
"How? When? And where were you?"
The accusation was very implicit but unmistakably accurate. When my sweet daughter desperately needed you, where were you? Her own husband. Madam Jin hurried to her daughter's side.
She knelt before her with the urgency of a mother seized by terrible fear. She gently cupped Jin Mulan's face, with both hands, searching for visible injuries, or some sign of what had transpired.
"My child..." Her voice trembled. "Tell Mother everything. Don't hide anything from me." Jin Mulan lowered her eyes, her voice barely audible.
"I became separated from Husband for a short while. I went to the washroom. Two powerful guards restrained me before I could react. They were too strong. I couldn't even move." She stopped, unable to continue.
Count Jin's expression darkened with comprehension. "They were that strong? She's a martial Grandmaster and they restrained her that easily?" Luo He nodded.
"They were both Divine Realm experts. Extraordinarily powerful." Count Jin clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles went white. "No wonder she couldn't escape..."
His voice became hoarse with emotion.
"What happened after that? What did that animal do to her?" The silence that followed was suffocating. No one spoke.
The absence of immediate reassurance became its own terrible answer.
Madam Jin's breathing grew uneven. Her imagination, left without facts to anchor it, began to spiral into the most darkest possibilities. Her hands trembled as she gripped Luo He's sleeve.
"Son-In-Law..." Her voice was barely a whisper, fractured with terror. "...Tell me the truth." She swallowed hard, unable to voice the horror that was consuming her thoughts.
"Did he..." She couldn't finish the horrific sentence. Her eyes slowly turned toward Jin Mulan's abdomen, as if searching for some visible sign of violation.
The horrifying thought struck her all at once and shattering what remained of her composure. "No... No, my daughter..."
She covered her mouth as tears began streaming down her face uncontrollably.
"You couldn't have... My poor child..."
Count Jin's face turned deathly pale. The color drained from his features until he looked like a man carved from stone.
His voice, when he finally spoke, was dangerously quiet. The kind of quiet that precedes catastrophic violence. "He..."
He fixed the man with a stare that could have burned through steel.
"When my daughter needed you most... When she was in danger and crying out for protection...where were you?" The accusation hung heavily in the room, heavy enough to crush.
Ning Jia immediately stepped forward, her voice sharp and defensive. "Father Jin!" She looked directly at him, her expression firm.
"This wasn't his fault. You cannot blame him for this. He can't possibly follow sister Mulan everywhere she goes. Specially not to the washroom, and it all happened within moments." She argued.
"He had already been searching for her when he realized she was missing."
Count Jin's jaw clenched, but doubt flickered in his eyes. "Is that true?"
He asked calming down slightly.
Luo He nodded once, his expression serene. "I noticed she had been gone longer than expected. So I began searching immediately. I found the room before anything could happen to her."
Madam Jin looked up hopefully, but desperately, seeking for reassurance.
"Before...?" Luo He remained silent.
The silence only made everyone's fears worse. It stretched and expanded, filling the room with unspoken horrors. Each second of silence felt like confirmation of the worst possibilities.
Jin Quan's breathing became heavier, more labored, as if he were suffocating under the weight of his own imaginings.
"What did that ass-hole do to her? Tell me exactly what happened." He screamed. Jin Mulan answered quietly, her voice small.
"He took me back into the washroom. The guards held me there with some strange form of suppression. I couldn't move at all. I didn't feel my cultivation. Then He threatened me."
"He threatened Mother & Father. He threatened my daughter." Madam Jin's hands flew to her mouth, tears flowing freely now.
"He threatened the child? Oh Heaven..."
"And...and did he..?" The words wouldn't come. She couldn't force them out. "Did he touch you? Did he..." She couldn't say it. Couldn't voice the word that would make it real.
'Rape'. Her daughter. Or violated. Her daughter. She didn't bear the physical scars of assault. Jin Mulan remained silent. The room became suffocating.
Even Ning Jia lowered her head, sensing the full scope of what the silence implied.
Count Jin's martial energy erupted uncontrollably, cracking the walls around him, causing ornaments to rattle and fall.
"I'm going to kill him with my own hands. That dog will die screaming." Luo He finally spoke, his voice cutting through the chaos like a blade. "You won't." He said firmly.
Everyone turned toward him. "I already dealt with him." He said. Count Jin's eyes narrowed. "How? Did you kill him? That's not enough. Death would be too merciful for what he did."
"I threw him into a cesspit." He said proudly. For a moment, no one understood. Then the full weight of the statement settled over them. Nin Jia quietly looked away.
She knew Luo He well enough to understand that those simple words concealed a far harsher fate than they sounded. A cesspit. Filth. Degradation. Suffering.
General Jin slowly sat back down, his anger warring with his desperate need to know more. He looked once more at his daughter, studying her carefully. "Mulan. Tell Father the complete truth."
"How far did it actually go?" The room fell completely silent. Jin Mulan slowly looked toward Luo He. He gave a small nod, granting her permission to speak.
Only then did she answer, her voice steady despite everything.
"He managed to restrain me with the help of him bodyguards." Her parents leaned forward, hanging on every word. "He touched me. He threatened me. He threatened my family."
"He demanded that I visit him at night. He said if I didn't come, he would hurt Little Lin. He would destroy everyone I care about. Burn the mansion to the ground."
Madam Jin's face had gone gray. "But...Is that's all he did?"