Ye Jingchen waited for Chenxi to continue speaking, but after waiting for quite a while, he still heard nothing further.
He lifted his head to look at Chenxi, and Chenxi looked down at him as well.
Ye Jingchen suddenly understood why the original body had disliked this personal dark guard.
So what if he was tall?
Did he not know to bend down in front of his master? Especially when his master was shorter than him!
He was still just a child. Being short was only temporary. Someday, he would grow tall, taller than this wooden dark guard!
By then, he would look down on him every single day!
That would teach him to bully a child!
Ye Jingchen thought bitterly to himself. Seeing that Chenxi really had no intention of speaking, he had no choice but to take the initiative and ask, “Why did Consort De do this? Did she want to kill me and then make the Second Imperial Brother the Crown Prince?”
Actually, Consort De’s intentions were very obvious. If she could kill either him or Ye Jingyu, that would be ideal. If she could not kill them, she could still sow conflict and hatred between him and Ye Jingyu. Once their relationship deteriorated, Consort De could sit back and watch the tigers fight, reaping the benefits for herself.
In the novel, Consort De’s scheme had succeeded.
The Crown Prince had tried to push Ye Jingyu, but instead he had brought disaster on himself. Given his personality, he would never reflect on his own mistake; instead, he would blame Ye Jingyu for it and spend the rest of his life trying every possible way to take revenge for that fall into the water.
As for the Noble Consort and her son, the Noble Consort had been left with a lasting illness after kneeling as punishment, and the Emperor’s favoritism had completely broken her heart. It was only natural that she would come to hate the original body, and Ye Jingyu had even more reason to hate the original body, whether because of his mother or because of himself.
In the original story, he actually had not been very ambitious about the throne. The reason he kept opposing the Crown Prince was simply to avenge himself and the Noble Consort.
Of course, now that Ye Jingchen had replaced the original body, he was not about to take the initiative and make enemies of the Noble Consort and her son.
After all, the Ji family was a thousand-year reclusive family, and the wealth and strength it had secretly accumulated would not be much weaker than the Ye family’s. Ye Jingchen did not want to offend them.
But with the original body’s personality, it would have been impossible to take the initiative to befriend the Noble Consort and her son. That required a fitting opportunity.
And now, Ye Jingchen was waiting for Chenxi to hand that opportunity to him.
A child only a few years old should not have been able to see through this conspiracy, but Ye Jingchen’s question struck at the heart of the matter. Chenxi, however, did not become suspicious.
Although Ye Jingchen had been named Crown Prince at birth and had always been spoiled by the Emperor, making his position as Crown Prince seem as unshakable as a mountain to outsiders, Chenxi could feel that Ye Jingchen had always been deeply uneasy inside. He treated all of the Emperor’s other sons as if they were his enemies and wanted them all dead.
Otherwise, he would not have harbored malicious thoughts toward the Third Imperial Prince and tried to push him into the water to drown him.
This matter had certainly been set up by Consort De, but Ye Jingchen had walked into the trap on his own.
After all, if he had not first intended to harm someone, he would not have gone near the water, let alone fallen in.
As the person he was supposed to be loyal to, Chenxi really disliked Ye Jingchen’s sinister and foolish personality, but who told him he was fortunate enough to be His Highness’s child?
“Consort De did this to sow discord between you and the Noble Consort and her son,” Chenxi said.
It was a reply that suited Ye Jingchen perfectly.
He suppressed the upward curl of his lips, clenched his tiny fists, and pretended to be angry as he said, “In that case, I definitely will not let her get what she wants!”
“Chenxi, how old is Ye Jingyu this year?” Ye Jingchen asked.
“Six years old.”
“Then he should be studying, right?” Ye Jingchen’s eyes lit up.
“He has just begun his education.”
“Tomorrow we will go to Weiyang Palace to visit the Third Imperial Brother. He has been wronged!” Ye Jingchen said.
“Wasn’t this grievance caused by you?” Chenxi could not help but mutter inwardly.
“What about those palace attendants? How should they be dealt with?” he asked.
Ye Jingchen smiled slyly. “Tomorrow, bring them to the Noble Consort. They can be given to her as an apology gift.”
“And what about the others?” Chenxi asked again.
“Chenxi, have you ever seen a cat catch a mouse?” Ye Jingchen asked in return.
Born into poverty, Chenxi had certainly seen a cat catch a mouse.
Cats are the natural enemies of mice and have complete dominance over them, so after catching a mouse, they usually do not eat it right away. Instead, they first toy with it for amusement before the feast.
After pinning a mouse down with its paw, a cat likes to deliberately loosen its grip and let the mouse run. Once the mouse has run a certain distance, it will suddenly dart after it and pin the mouse under its paw again. When the mouse gives up struggling, it loosens its paw once more and lets the mouse run, then catches it back again. The cycle repeats endlessly.
A cat’s claws are sharp. Each time it pins a mouse down, it leaves wounds on its body. Again and again, until the mouse is struck in a vital spot or loses too much blood and no longer has the strength to move. Only then does the cat elegantly and leisurely enjoy its meal.
For the cat, this process is as pleasurable as eating the meal itself, but for the mouse being toyed with, the repeated cycle of hope and disappointment can no longer be described simply with the word “despair.”
When Chenxi was little, he did not have many things to amuse himself with. Watching a cat toy with a mouse was very interesting to him. But when he thought of it from a human perspective and in human terms, he could not help but shiver.
As expected of noble-born royalty, cold-blooded and cruel from a young age, truly heartless.
However…
“The Eastern Palace has no cats, let alone mice. How does the master know how cats catch mice?” Chenxi asked abruptly.
Ye Jingchen’s heart skipped a beat…
He had gotten a little carried away. As the Crown Prince, how could he possibly have had a chance to see something like a mouse?
He kept his expression unchanged and said with feigned innocence, “I saw it in a book. Books have everything in them!”
The dark guards were all born as death warriors. Before becoming dark guards, they underwent training in utter darkness and misery. Reading was a luxury; merely being able to recognize characters was already enough.
However, Chenxi had heard a saying: “In books there are houses of gold, and in books there are faces like jade.”
Books have everything.
That was what his sister had told him.
And it was because of the former Empress’s kindness that his sister had been given the chance to learn to read, to study, and to live as a person with dignity.
That was why he was here now.
The former Empress had changed his sister’s fate, and he would use his life to protect the former Empress’s bloodline.
Even though the Crown Prince was nothing like his mother, who was so benevolent.
He had been a rotten seed since childhood!
And now that rotten seed was thinking about doing something rotten.
Consort De wanted to see the Eastern Palace and Weiyang Palace become enemies, and he also happened to want to see Weiyang Palace and Yichun Palace fight it out.
Consort De’s father was the Minister of Personnel, who was in charge of Dayuan’s official appointments, assessments, promotions, demotions, transfers, and other affairs. He was the head of the Six Ministries, and among the civil officials his power and prestige ranked just below the Prime Minister.
In the novel, Consort De was the most ambitious of the Emperor’s harem consorts. She had ambition, means, and decisiveness, and was the best at causing trouble.
Consort De had an extremely strong desire for control. The Second Imperial Prince, Ye Jingming, had always lived under her control, and his greatest wish was to become Emperor and escape her control. For that reason, mother and son had never been short of scheming against each other, yet they were united in opposing outsiders. She was a formidable opponent.