Wu Junji regained consciousness in a daze. A sharp pain radiated from his buttocks, and as he opened his mouth, a faint, wailing cry escaped his lips.
Someone wrapped him up with trembling hands.
“Crown Prince, it is a little prince.”
Wu Junji struggled to open one eye, trying to make sense of his situation. An unfamiliar face entered his field of vision.
Why was his perspective so skewed?
A jolt ran through Wu Junji—he had turned into an infant!
“Bring him here, let me see…”
Wu Junji’s heart shuddered. That voice clearly belonged to his royal father from his previous life!
Where was his mother?
Thinking of the mother he had never met in his past life, Wu Junji wailed. His current body was that of a premature baby, making his cries weak and thready.
Someone pulled back his swaddling clothes, parting his legs to reveal his gender so the master could see clearly.
“Hahahaha…”
A burst of laughter rang out, sounding like someone who had finally achieved their heart’s desire, yet the tone was so cold it could make one shiver.
“It was not in vain that I birthed him myself!”
Using the position of the midwife, who was kneeling on the ground begging for mercy, Wu Junji forced his head to turn to the side, desperate to see his mother.
But there was no one…
Instead, he saw a court physician using a needle to stitch up Emperor Zhou’s shriveled belly.
Wu Junji’s head exploded with a loud buzz!
Even with the knowledge of two lifetimes, he could not immediately comprehend the scene before his eyes.
After a very long time, Wu Junji began to gnaw on his fist in a daze, his brain numb from the shock of this hidden secret.
The current Crown Prince, the future Emperor Zhou, born of noble status and peerless prestige…
He had actually given birth to a child in such a manner?
Hahahaha!
No wonder he had ended up wandering among the common folk.
No wonder Emperor Zhou never mentioned his mother.
No wonder Emperor Zhou always looked at him with such complicated eyes.
No wonder Emperor Zhou had tried to kill him multiple times.
His very existence was Emperor Zhou’s stain and shame.
Wu Junji felt his heart grow cold.
In his previous life, he had fought for power with Emperor Zhou for a lifetime and finally succeeded in seeing the old man off.
In the funeral hall, he had been unable to contain his joy, burying his face as he laughed maniacally. Unfortunately, his broken body couldn’t withstand the intensity of his emotions, and he had accidentally laughed himself to death.
Why let him be reborn? To let him spend another sixteen years as a beggar before returning to court to become a pawn for balancing factions?
Just strangle me…
Wu Junji thought. Just strangle me and be done with it.
Just as he thought this, he was passed into a new pair of arms.
A domineering scent of sweet red sandalwood enveloped him.
Wu Bing’s eyes were dark and sunken. Because of the medication, his appearance carried a subtle, indiscernible feminine softness. However, as time passed and the drugs were purged from his system, he would look no different from a normal man.
As Wu Junji was being born, a slaughter was unfolding within this traveling palace.
Several inconspicuous people dressed in plain clothes quickly and methodically cleared out the midwives in the room.
Only Wu Bing’s personal eunuch and the physician stitching his wound remained.
Several lives were extinguished in an instant and dragged away.
Wu Bing didn’t even lift an eyelid.
Time ticked by second by second. Everyone was waiting for something until, half an hour later, hurried footsteps sounded.
“Your Highness! A message from His Majesty: at the hour of the Horse, Consort Dong gave birth to a little imperial grandson. Both mother and son are healthy and well.”
The smile on Wu Bing’s face widened.
His hand moved to the neck of the infant in his arms.
His royal father only had him as a son, but he was born deformed, an intersex being. Even the world’s top physicians dared not assert whether he could produce offspring.
His royal father would rather pass the throne to his uncle’s lineage than give it to a son who couldn’t continue the bloodline.
By a strange twist of fate, he had produced this little son in his arms. At the same time, Consort Dong had also sent word of her success.
The Empress Dowager had said that both children must be born, because no one could guarantee that his condition wouldn’t appear in the child.
With two, there was a choice; with only one, there was truly no hope.
Heaven had eyes; both were normal!
Compared to the one born to Consort Dong, the little thing in his arms was of unknown origin and served as the greatest shame of his life. Killing him would save the boy from suffering in this world.
Wu Junji’s face turned purple from the lack of air. His instinct for survival forced him to open his mouth, crying and struggling.
He lost consciousness after only a few breaths.
Wu Bing’s fingers, which had been clamped around the infant’s neck, suddenly loosened.
The eight-month premature baby weighed only four catties—a soft, small lump with skin as red as a monkey’s butt. Beneath the corner of his right eye was a tiny mole the size of a needlepoint.
He was so ugly it was impossible to tell who he looked like.
Wu Bing originally didn’t even want to look at him, but before the C-section, he had been plagued by nightmares for a month.
In those dreams, a gaunt, skeletal man knelt before a coffin, his mournful wails like those of a lone swan, before taking his own life to be buried with the deceased.
He had heard people calling that man—the Crown Prince.
Every time he woke up, he was filled with guilt and a complex mixture of emotions.
He felt an indescribable, invisible connection to the little thing in his arms.
After much internal struggle, Wu Bing handed the infant to his confidant eunuch, Qian Deli.
“Take him to the Empress Dowager. We will decide further once I wake.”
Eunuch Qian Deli carefully took the child.
“This servant obeys.”
The pain of the C-section was immense. Despite the amount of Mafei Powder used, Wu Bing was drenched in a cold sweat from the agony.
His body, though strengthened by battles on the field, could no longer hold out, and he fell into a deep sleep.
Upon hearing that both children were normal, the Empress Dowager’s tense spine finally relaxed.
She said “good” three times in a row.
Devoutly fingering her Buddhist beads, she murmured, “Heaven has not abandoned this palace and my son.”
The Empress Dowager pulled back the swaddling clothes and froze.
Wu Bing couldn’t see it, but she knew all too well.
This child looked exactly like Wu Bing did when he was born.
The intention to send him away wavered in her heart.
The Empress Dowager said, “Take him down and raise him well.”
In the previous life, after Wu Bing learned that Consort Dong had given birth to a son, he hadn’t even looked at Wu Junji before ordering him thrown out of the palace. He was picked up by a human trafficker and raised tied up in a cattle shed.
Wu Junji hadn’t found an opportunity to escape until he was four years old.