“Your Majesty, the Emperor has come again,” the palace maid reported happily.
The Empress’s mouth twitched slightly.
The Emperor must have come to urge about using the Fourteenth Princess as bait.
The Emperor was impatient…
As she was thinking, Emperor Jingming had already walked in, and the Empress hurriedly greeted him.
Emperor Jingming sent away the servants and said, “Empress, we can’t delay that matter any longer. Delay breeds change.”
Even people arrested and put in the Brocade Scale Guard’s prison could escape; what else was impossible?
The Empress nodded.
When it was time for the imperial couple to have dinner, Princess Fuqing came over.
“Oh, Father is here too.”
The Empress smiled, “We happened to have dishes that both you and your father like, so we called you over.”
Looking at her daughter, who was smiling brightly but had lost a lot of weight, the Empress felt a twinge of guilt.
Ever since the Fifteenth Princess died, Aqian often had nightmares and cried countless times, always blaming herself for implicating the Fifteenth. Yet, in front of them, she always maintained a smiling facade.
Now, to set up this trap, they had to deliberately bring it up in front of Aqian…
“Aqian has lost weight,” Emperor Jingming said.
The Empress agreed, “She has lost quite a bit. Have you not been eating well?”
Princess Fuqing quickly replied, “Father, Mother, don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
In front of all the palace maids, Emperor Jingming suddenly sighed, “Indeed, Aqian is much stronger than the Fourteenth and Fifteenth…”
Princess Fuqing’s eyelashes trembled, and she lowered her gaze.
The Empress frowned, “At a time like this, Your Majesty shouldn’t mention others.”
“I just felt some emotion seeing Aqian. The Fifteenth is already gone, there’s no use talking about her, but as for the Fourteenth, ever since her mother left, her health has been getting worse. Being so alone, I’m always worried…”
“Your Majesty’s meaning—”
Emperor Jingming looked deeply at the Empress: “Empress, why don’t you adopt the Fourteenth as your daughter?”
All the palace maids in the room showed surprise but quickly lowered their eyes to hide it.
After a moment of shock, the Empress firmly rejected the idea: “Impossible! Has Your Majesty forgotten how the Fifteenth died?”
The Empress’s outright refusal seemed to leave Emperor Jingming at a loss: “Although Concubine Chen was guilty, the Fourteenth is innocent. Empress, you are the mother of the nation. How can you not have even this much capacity for forgiveness…”
“Your Majesty thinks I lack the capacity for forgiveness because I won’t agree to adopt the Fourteenth? Children paying for their parents’ debts is a principle of justice. Even if I pity the Fourteenth’s circumstances and don’t allow people to neglect her, how can there be any reason to make her a legitimate princess? If rewards and punishments are misplaced in everything, how can we deter those with evil intentions? Your Majesty, this encourages people to do evil. I absolutely cannot agree!”
“I was just making a small suggestion. Why is the Empress so upset?”
The imperial couple’s argument frightened the servants in the room so much that they didn’t dare to breathe, each as silent as a cicada in winter.
After a heated argument, Emperor Jingming left with a black face, his sleeves swishing angrily.