Zhou Jin looked at Xu Bao'er with complicated feelings. This woman had him completely under her thumb.
She had given him so many frights in a single day.
Seeing that Zhou Jin was no longer angry, Xu Bao'er began acting coquettishly and pressed her advantage.
“It is only because Your highness is too formidable, able to shoot leaves from a hundred paces, with every arrow finding its mark.”
How audacious! Zhou Jin's ears turned bright red.
Xu Bao'er was truly growing bold, relying on the fact that he could not bear to mistreat her.
“Your highness, please stop being angry with this concubine. Whenever you get angry, this concubine becomes frightened.”
“And whenever I get frightened, my stomach starts to hurt.”
Frightened? Zhou Jin found it both exasperating and amusing. Did Xu Bao'er even know how to write the word “frightened”? Now she had learned how to hold the emperor hostage to command the nobles.
“Forget it, Your highness. If it truly will not do, return the divorce letter to this concubine.”
“This concubine will voluntarily leave your household. I will leave at once and stop troubling Your highness's eyes.”
Xu Bao'er assessed the situation and realized that Zhou Jin did not seem nearly as angry as she had imagined. He loved her even more than she had thought.
For someone like Zhou Jin, who hated being deceived more than anything, to forgive her deception so easily was truly unexpected.
Xu Bao'er immediately turned the tables and counterattacked Zhou Jin.
Just as Xu Bao'er was about to take the divorce letter, Zhou Jin immediately pulled it from his breast and tore it to shreds.
Countless scraps of paper fluttered through the air before falling onto Xu Bao'er.
“You can forget about leaving this prince for the rest of your life!”
The Zhou Jin of the past had sneered at it with disdain, but the Zhou Jin of today had been thoroughly humbled, bowing his head before love.
The divorce letter? He would never acknowledge it, even if beaten to death!
“Idiots, a bunch of idiots!”
The emperor gnashed his teeth in fury and paced back and forth in his bedchamber. How could his crown prince be so brainless?
The crown prince's words in the Imperial Court had forced the emperor into an impossible dilemma. The second prince intended rebellion and deserved death.
But could he kill the second prince? Absolutely not.
Leaving aside the power of the second prince's maternal family, whom was the second prince working for? He was working for the emperor.
The second prince was indeed the person behind the jiulan mountain bandits, but the person behind the second prince was him.
In the end, the second prince was merely the puppet he used to control the jiulan mountain bandits.
Why did the emperor raise a group of mountain bandits? Because there were certain officials in the Imperial Court whom he could not bring himself to kill.
Those officials who did not know when they were courting death considered themselves loyal ministers and offered remonstrances at every turn. Just looking at them irritated him.
He was the emperor, the Son of Heaven, whose words were law.
Were these people not mocking him for being incompetent and benighted by offering all those remonstrances?
Die! Every last one of them could die!
Over the years, the second prince had killed many loyal ministers for the emperor. The civil and military officials had been terrified, and one after another they had submitted memorials demanding justice.
Justice? What justice? There was no justice in this world to begin with.
There was only the emperor's way. These dog slaves thought that becoming officials made them different from those eunuchs.
In his eyes, they were all the same.
The emperor's chest tightened with anger. He had originally intended to use the jiulan mountain bandits to eliminate that wicked son.
He had never imagined that Zhou Jin would survive. The Jiulan Mountain forces were effectively ruined, and the second prince had been dragged down with them.
The second prince knew too many of his secrets. The emperor felt uneasy and planned to visit him in prison to placate him, lest he blurt out something in desperation.
In the Imperial Prison, the second prince cursed the crown prince's ancestors from the eighteenth generation onward. How could someone as stupid as a pig become the crown prince?
Looking at himself in prison garb, the second prince's hostility toward the crown prince had reached an unprecedented level.
Between him and the crown prince, one of them would die.
The crown prince had indeed exposed him, yet he did not know that there was someone behind him.
Once he got out, he would fight the crown prince to the death.
The second prince stared at the red bricks of the Imperial Prison, his gaze vicious.
The crown prince's actions had plainly cut off the second prince's path to seizing the throne. After killing so many high-ranking officials, who would still support him? His reputation was utterly ruined.
The second prince had painstakingly cultivated his position for so many years and willingly handled dirty matters for the imperial father, only to end up in this state.
If he could not become emperor, then the crown prince could forget about it as well.
“The emperor has arrived.”
Imperial father—the imperial father had come.
The second prince swept away his previous gloom and immediately stood up. He knew that the imperial father would not abandon him.
The Prison Cell door opened, and the emperor strode toward the second prince, his face filled with concern.
“Xu'er, you have suffered.”
Seeing the imperial father's heartache and concern for him, the gloom in the second prince's heart vanished. As long as the imperial father stood on his side, there was still hope.
“I have not suffered. Your son has not suffered.”
“Imperial father, the crown prince now insists on sending Your Son to his death. Imperial father, you must stand up for Your Son.”
The moment he saw the emperor, the second prince voiced his demand.
When the snipe and clam fight, the fisherman benefits.
The emperor did not want the crown prince and the second prince to turn against each other, but given the current situation, it seemed both sides were determined to put the other to death.
“The crown prince was somewhat rash in this matter.”
Somewhat rash? Upon hearing the emperor's choice of words, the hatred in the second prince's eyes deepened.
Was the imperial father taking the crown prince's side? He had fallen into such dire straits, and the imperial father was still favoring the crown prince.
It was unfair!
“Imperial father, how was the crown prince merely rash? He clearly wants Your Son dead.”
“All these years, Your Son has braved fire and water for you without ever asking for anything.”
“Can you truly bear to watch Your Son suffer such humiliation now?”
The second prince's voice choked with emotion. Hatred had robbed him of his reason.
“There is still room for a change in this matter. You and the crown prince are brothers. You must not turn against each other and fall into someone else's scheme.”
After hearing this, the second prince staggered back several steps.
This was not his imperial father. Matters had reached this point, yet his imperial father still kept protecting the crown prince.
“Imperial father, your favoritism has truly disappointed Your Son.”
“The crown prince plainly intended to cut off Your Son's path to survival in the Imperial Court. Now you permit him to kill Your Son but refuse to let Your Son strike back.”
“Fall into a scheme? Whose scheme? Prince Duan's?”
The second prince questioned the emperor again and again. To protect the crown prince, it seemed his good imperial father intended to make Prince Duan take the blame once more.
Had Prince Duan told the crown prince to announce the evidence in the Imperial Court?
No.
The crown prince had targeted Prince Duan since childhood. There was no way he would listen to Prince Duan.
“Prince Duan is scheming and not one of our kind. You and the crown prince must not lose your brotherly harmony because of his schemes.”
Now that the border conflict had subsided, the emperor had spent the past few days thinking about how to put Prince Duan to death.
To the emperor, Prince Duan was now nothing more than an abandoned pawn. However, Prince Duan's prestige in the army and among the people was too high for him to be killed casually. The emperor had to find a pretext.
“Heh.”
The second prince now saw his imperial father clearly and laughed mockingly.
“The war is over, and Prince Duan has become an abandoned pawn.”
“Now that Jiulan Mountain is gone, will Your Son also become an abandoned pawn of yours, imperial father?”
“What nonsense are you spouting!”
The emperor flew into a rage and fiercely flung his bright-yellow robe. His evasive gaze made him look like a cornered wolf whose secret had been exposed.
“How could you and Prince Duan be the same? You are the imperial father's good son.”
“Prince Duan is nothing more than a bastard.”
“A bastard born from a plaything of the former dynasty.”
The second prince was rendered speechless. He had not expected the imperial father to hate Prince Duan so deeply. The display of loving father and filial son they had put on before others had all been nothing but a disguise.
His imperial father had transferred all his hatred for Consort Jing onto Prince Duan.
When the hounds are no longer needed, they are slaughtered. The second prince suddenly felt that his future was hopeless. He understood now: the imperial father had come not to comfort him, but to prevent him from saying anything reckless.