“I am deeply alarmed, and must beg an audience with Your Majesty!”
The Hanlin General knelt, holding a piece of paper aloft with both hands.
Eunuch Yu received it and presented it to the Emperor with a bow.
The Emperor’s face grew increasingly grim beneath his Twelve-tasseled Crown as he read.
“This is the route I ordered the Crown Prince to take with me to Mount Hua for prayer.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the Hanlin General said with trepidation. “The Crown Prince brought this terrain map to discuss with me, instructing me to secretly station troops along this route, ready to act on the Crown Prince’s orders at any time.”
The Emperor let out a cold snort.
“Fine. What a fine Crown Prince indeed.”
Consort Chen had suggested a plan—arranging for someone to stage an assassination attempt during the journey to test the Crown Prince’s filial loyalty.
But who would have thought that before they’d even left the palace gates, the Crown Prince was already making his own moves.
“Since the Crown Prince ordered you to deploy troops, follow his instructions accordingly. Report the Crown Prince’s movements to me at all times.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The Hanlin General withdrew from Yu Shufang.
The Emperor stared at the pile of memorials before him, fury surging through his chest. He slammed his palm onto the desk.
“This unfilial son truly cannot wait any longer!”
The Crown Prince had been especially ostentatious in recent years, constantly stealing the spotlight—clearly restless in his position as Heir Apparent.
Eunuch Yu knelt in panic. “Your Majesty, please calm your anger. Since the journey holds danger, should we cancel—”
“No, we will go, of course we will go,” the Emperor said coldly. “Should we wait until the Nanjing Wang’s daughter marries into the Taishifu, making this unfilial son even harder to deal with? On the road to Mount Hua, I will ensure this unfilial son never returns.”
The Commandery Princess Nanhua’s bridal sedan had already arrived outside Jinling Cheng, yet within the city, a catastrophe of earth-shattering proportions had occurred.
The bells of National Mourning shook the heavens, their sorrowful tolling unending.
“The Crown Prince actually committed patricide and regicide—who could have imagined such a thing?”
“His benevolence and virtue were all a facade! Ambition was the truth!”
“And now? The Emperor has been assassinated, the Crown Prince will be executed—who will sit on the throne? Won’t the realm descend into chaos!”
Qing Ci listened to the clamor in the teahouse and sighed inwardly.
What a pity. During National Mourning, marriages and betrothals were forbidden. Qin Chengze was to take a wife tomorrow, and yet the heavens had changed today.
The Taishifu immediately distanced itself from any connection with the Crown Prince.
That the Second Young Miss would become Crown Princess—that had been the intention of the late Emperor and Empress, not the Taishifu’s.
But in the current situation, everyone was concerned with who would become the new Emperor; no one had time to concern themselves with the Taishifu.
Even those with hostile intentions couldn’t act against the Taishifu amid the current political chaos.
In the dim, damp Imperial Prison reeking of decay, Fu Jingyi was led by a jailer, step by step, toward the Water Dungeon where the Crown Prince was held.
When the Crown Prince saw him, a twisted smile stretched across his tortured, disfigured face.
“I’m finished, but it won’t be your turn either. What are you here to gawk at?”
Fu Jingyi raised his sleeve to cover his face, and when he lowered it, his features had transformed.
The face was gaunt and rugged, extraordinarily ugly—yet it was a face the deposed Crown Prince knew all too well.
“You—you—it’s you!”
Panic flickered across his filthy, bloodstained face, followed by fury and indignation. “So it was you!”
Fu Jingyi tore off the mask and cast it into the candle flame, where it burned to ash.
Without a single word, the deposed Crown Prince slowly began to understand.
“So… so you were never helping me. You made me win the people’s hearts, made me win battles, made me steal the spotlight, made me marry the Grand Preceptor’s daughter… You were killing me with kindness—praise-to-death!”
Fu Jingyi regarded him calmly.
This man was born a legitimate imperial prince, made Crown Prince at the age of ten. All he needed to do was wait patiently—outlive his father, and he would be Emperor.
But he simply couldn’t stay still. He was too eager to seize the realm into his grasp, and that gave Fu Jingyi his opening.
For the past five years, he had worn a mask to approach the Crown Prince, offering counsel and schemes, lifting him to the clouds of popular adoration.
The Crown Prince believed he had won both the people’s hearts and the courtiers’ support. Indeed, the praise and acclaim of the common folk were real—but the courtiers’ support was nothing but hollow pretense, loyal only to profit.
Now that the wall had collapsed, everyone pushed against it. Among the hundred officials, not one dared speak a word of injustice for the Crown Prince.
“It was you! You made Father wary of me, so he wanted me eliminated!”
The Crown Prince had never contacted the Hanlin General to deploy troops—he had Grand Preceptor Qin behind him; why would he need to borrow soldiers from elsewhere?
But the Emperor had been too eager to seize evidence against the Crown Prince, preferring to believe it was true.
And the deposed Crown Prince had believed from start to finish that the journey was a trap—he had to strike first.
The Crown Prince suddenly remembered something. “Did Father leave an Imperial Decree of Succession?”
“He did.”
This visit was meant to let him die with clarity. “Before departing for Mount Hua, Father wrote two decrees—one deposing you, and another naming me Crown Prince.”
The deposed Crown Prince froze, his face a mask of sorrow and horror.
His mouth hung open for a long moment, then he begged humbly: “I am a dead man walking—do not implicate the Empress. She is your legitimate mother as well…”
Fu Jingyi smiled. “The world knows me as Consort Chen’s son, but the Empress should not have forgotten that my birth mother was Lady Ning of Jizhou.”
The year his mother was tortured to death in Yongxiang, he was five years old.
Because his mother refused to fawn over the Empress, and had no imperial favor, she was crushed to death easily within the deep palace.
He remembered his mother telling him, “You must survive. You must please the Emperor. Only the Emperor can protect you.”
But the Emperor never even glanced at him.
He waited in the palace for years, until Consort Chen arrived. The look the Emperor gave her was one of utter, helpless infatuation.
Everyone knew this enchantress would win favor.
The palace was never short of beauties with jade-like skin and delicate bones, but Consort Chen was charming without being contrived, alluring without being seductive. She always appeared frail and helpless, inviting pity, yet beneath that exterior, she was no one to be trifled with.
Taking Consort Chen as one’s adoptive mother was undoubtedly a way out.
Qin Chengze had spent the entire day behind closed doors drinking tea with the Grand Preceptor, and returned to his own courtyard still weighed down with worries.
Grand Preceptor Qin had once been the most formidable supporter of the deposed Crown Prince’s faction—his loyalty was known to all. A year ago, he had vigorously petitioned the throne, requesting the execution of Consort Chen.
To curry favor with the Crown Prince, he had not hesitated to slight the Seventh Prince.
But now, the Seventh Prince Fu Jingyi had ascended the throne, and Consort Chen had become the Empress Dowager.
He, Qin Chengze, and Grand Preceptor Qin could only watch helplessly as the civil and military officials hailed the Seventh Prince with cries of “Long live the Emperor.”
The situation was far from optimistic.
Qing Ci, unusually obedient, waited in the courtyard. Seeing him return, she thoughtfully took his cloak.
“As long as the Grand Preceptor sincerely bows his head in fealty, the new Emperor won’t make an example of him.”
After all, with the transition of imperial power and an unstable court, the new Emperor’s throne wouldn’t be secure for at least a year or two.
All they had to do was behave well.
Qin Chengze sat before his desk, pinching his aching brow.
“Father was within reach of becoming the Emperor’s father-in-law. How could he now willingly bow his head to Fu Jingyi?”
“What else can he do if he’s unwilling? His master is already dead. What does the Grand Preceptor want to do—usurp the throne himself?”
Crude words, but the logic held.
Qing Ci hadn’t read many books, but she knew from the storytellers that throughout history, few who wielded such immense power ever met a good end.
“Aji, have you ever thought—even if the Crown Prince hadn’t met with misfortune, and he had ascended the throne as he wished, would he really have tolerated such an Empress and such powerful relatives by marriage?”
She rarely called him Aji. Qin Chengze averted his eyes. “Even if one stays content as a minister, one cannot escape open spears and hidden arrows. In officialdom, who wouldn’t dream of being a Cao Cao?”
That sounded quite reasonable. Qing Ci thought it over and found no way to refute it.
His peach-blossom eyes grew slightly moist, his gaze deepening by several shades.
“You don’t need to be afraid. If the Taishifu truly faces its downfall, you just leave—go far away.”