"Uncle Qiu... how long have you been with best friends with my father?" Xiao Fang softly asked while they were eating. She never asked this question before and she only knew that they were best friends for a long time. Uncle Qiu was always there from the beginning and she had gotten used to his presence when she was growing up.

"Long before you were born, Kid!" Uncle Qiu said with a smile. He felt a bit weird with her sudden question because she had never seemed to feel curious about this thing before.

"G.o.dfather... I need to confirm something with you first before I ask my father about something..." Xiao Fang asked seriously. However, she bit her lower lips, trying to hold back her nervousness. She was afraid to hear the truth...

Uncle Qiu rarely saw Xiao Fang this serious and somehow he felt that she was going to ask an important question. Did she finally... know something? He didn't dare to think about it if she found out the truth. He just hoped that it wasn't about that...

He sighed and asked, "What do you want to ask me?" His heart was beating faster, suddenly feeling afraid of Xiao Fang's next question.

"Am I really not my father's real daughter?" Xiao Fang dropped the bomb without beating around the bush.

Uncle Qiu closed his eyes in despair, knowing that she had indeed learned the truth. If possible, he wanted to s.h.i.+eld this little girl forever... It was better if she was oblivious for the rest of her life, but fate seemed to disagree with him. She found out about it by herself.

He asked in a hoa.r.s.e voice, "How... how do you know?"

He had already made an agreement with Xiao Fang's father that they would tell her the truth if she found out about it someday. He never thought that 'someday' would be this soon...

"So... it's really true..." Xiao Fang sighed sadly. When the trio saw her disappointed face, their hearts felt the ache for her.

Even though they had the evidence that she was indeed the Ce Fei's daughter, Xiao Fang was actually still in denial state. She might look calm on the outside, but all this time, her heart was in turbulence... When she saw her G.o.dfather's expression, her heart sank. So... it was indeed the truth...

Everyone knew about that... She was the only oblivious one...

Uncle Qiu sighed once more. It was fortunate that she decided to ask him first, otherwise... he knew his best friend would be heartbroken. His best friend loved this little girl so much ah~!

"Tell G.o.dfather... how did you find out about it?" Uncle Qiu asked once more. He needed to get the bottom of it.

Xiao Fang didn't talk for a little while because she wanted to sort her mind. When the trio wanted to open their mouth and try to offer their help to tell her G.o.dfather, she shook her head. This was her life and she should be brave enough to face it. Despite being the Ce Fei's real daughter, she wouldn't abandon her current ident.i.ty.

She had come to this conclusion after a few days of deliberation.

After all, her current family treated her with love... Once a family always a family. If she had that thought in mind, she felt better... She would just treat it as gaining a new family. The Ce Fei might have sent her away because of her selfishness, but she got a happy life because of that decision. If she stayed in the palace, there was a possibility that Han Xiang's fate would be her too.

In a way, the Ce Fei also saw the ugly environment and she showed her a bit of love by sending her away.

Xiao Fang started to recite what happened to her and Han Xiang --- one by one... She always had a great relations.h.i.+p with Uncle Qiu, thus, she never kept a secret from him. The trio trusted Xiao Fang's judgment and let her tell everything to Uncle Qiu. When Xiao Fang unraveled the trio's ident.i.ty, they didn't mind for one bit.

They could see how Uncle Qiu looked at Xiao Fang tenderly --- just like how a father looked at his own daughter dearly. This guess wasn't wrong. He didn't have a daughter and always yearn for one, thus, he treated Xiao Fang just like his own daughter. This kind of look was hard to fake...

Uncle Qiu could only gape at her when she had finished telling him the full story. He knew that there must be something big had happened on her journey. If not, how could she find out about that secret? But he could never guess it would be this big!

"Pri... Princess Han Xiang was dead?!" He could only ponder over the matter in disbelief. Crescent Lake was quite a secluded place and no commoners would be able to come inside here, thus, he rarely updated himself the latest news at a fast speed. He usually waited for his subordinates to bring the news from time to time. It seemed like even his subordinates hadn't gotten this news as well! Otherwise, he wouldn't wait to tell him ah~!

The quartet nodded their heads in unison and confirmed that she was really dead.

"The matter about the Han Emperor's wrongdoing... was it really true?" Uncle Qiu looked at them in disbelief.

Uncle Qiu knew that the Han Emperor wasn't a good person, but his inner courtyard always looked so peaceful from the outside. His women usually appeared so peaceful from the outside, were they just acting for the sake of their image? He would never think that something so despicable would happen inside his inner courtyard!

"Disgusting! Truly disgusting! I never knew that he is such a cruel person!" Uncle Qiu yelled in anger while slapping the table with his hand.

Uncle Qiu tried to calm himself down before he continued asking questions.

"Do you have any proof?" Uncle Qiu asked. He knew that he shouldn't ask this, but he truly couldn't believe that he served such a person loyally all this time. Despite his disagreement to take his old job back, it didn't mean that he was disloyal to the Han Emperor. He merely sulked and the Han Emperor understood his temperament very well, thus, he let him stay here to calm down.

Xiao Fang nodded. "We have one and a lot of people also saw the proof," Xiao Fang grinned widely. "We won't let the Han Emperor destroy the evidence!" With so many onlookers, he couldn't dismiss what happened to Han Xiang as a baseless rumor.

"What do you mean?" Uncle Qiu asked.

"We have Han Xiang's handwritten blood letter," Xiao Fang said. After that, she didn't forget to tell Uncle Qiu the things that had transpired after Han Xiang's death and how Han Xiang made a decision to tell the world about the truth! She had said that she didn't want to die in vain and it would be better if she could bring the Han Emperor down with her!

Uncle Qiu listened to everything that happened and his heart felt an ache for Han Xiang. After all, he had seen her grown up too! He thought that she had told him everything, but he didn't know that Xiao Fang would still drop another bomb next...

Xiao Fang hesitantly added, "There's something more..."

Uncle Qiu was taken aback. "More? What do you mean more? Is there something else that the Emperor has done?"

Xiao Fang shook her head. "No... it's not about something that he has done, but instead, it's something that he will do in the future..."

Uncle Qiu furrowed his eyebrows, knowing that he wouldn't like what Xiao Fang was going to say next. He prepared his heart and asked, "Tell me! What is it about?"

Xiao Fang told Uncle Qiu about the Han Emperor's paranoid tendency and how he wanted to get rid of several officials. Among those names, Xiao Fang's father was one of them.

Uncle Qiu shook his head sadly. He thought that the future plan was about the Han Emperor's harem... but it was more than that... Who knew that Princess Han Xiang was able to find out such a crazy secret?