Shou Kang Palace.
The Empress Dowager sat on the phoenix throne, her eyes dark and her mind uneasy.
Zhao Mama has been in the Cold Palace for half a day, why hasn't she returned yet?
I hope nothing bad happens...
The palace maid looked at the imperial meal, which was getting cold, and wondered where Zhao Mama had gone. Usually, it was Zhao Mama who persuaded the Empress Dowager to eat.
The palace maids pushed and shoved each other, and one of them stepped forward and said, "Empress Dowager, if we don't eat soon, the food will get cold."
The Empress Dowager waved her hand and said, "Take it away."
The palace maid hurriedly said, "Your Majesty, you haven't eaten a single bite yet."
The Empress Dowager simply waved her hand.
The palace maids only dared to offer one word of advice. Seeing that the Empress Dowager was in a bad mood, they were afraid of offending her and getting a beating. They quickly removed the imperial meal, and at worst, they could just tell the imperial kitchen to send some late-night snacks later. They wouldn't let the Empress Dowager go hungry.
Just as the palace maids were preparing to clear away the imperial meal and had picked it up, a hoarse voice rang out, "His Majesty has arrived!"
The palace maids quickly put down the imperial meal and stepped aside.
The Empress Dowager was feeling uneasy when she suddenly heard that the Emperor had arrived. She was taken aback. The Empress had secretly conceived a child with another man, and the Emperor was in a fit of anger. Why would he come to her place?
Seeing the Emperor enter, his expression remained calm. The Empress Dowager asked, "Why has Your Majesty come to my residence at this hour?"
The Emperor glanced at the imperial meal and asked, "Has the Empress Dowager not had dinner?"
Despite her best efforts to control her anger, she still managed to vent a little.
The Empress Dowager said, "I'm not hungry, so I didn't eat."
The Emperor asked, "Where is Granny Zhao? Why didn't she try to persuade the Empress Dowager?"
The Empress Dowager looked somewhat flustered. She said, "Granny Zhao is not feeling well, so I didn't let her serve me here. I told her to go and rest."
As the Empress Dowager spoke, Eunuch Yuan waved his hand, signaling the palace maids and nannies serving in the bedchamber to leave.
Eunuch Yuan is the Emperor's man; his order for the others to leave clearly reflects the Emperor's will.
The palace servants didn't dare to delay and quickly withdrew. Even Eunuch Yuan didn't stay, leaving only the Empress Dowager and the Emperor.
Upon seeing this, the Empress Dowager asked, "What is Your Majesty doing?"
His voice trembled slightly without his noticing.
The Emperor's barely suppressed anger finally surfaced. "Did Zhao Mama go to rest, or was she sent to the Cold Palace on the Empress Dowager's orders?!"
On the way to Shou Kang Palace, the Emperor kept reassuring himself that the Empress Dowager wouldn't treat him like that, clinging to a last glimmer of hope that he was just imagining things.
He asked where Zhao Mama was, and if the Empress Dowager had told him that she had sent Zhao Mama to the Cold Palace to kill the Empress, he wouldn't have been so angry. But the Empress Dowager chose to keep it a secret!
Are you afraid that if he finds out, he'll send someone to the Cold Palace to stop it?!
The Emperor had never spoken to the Empress Dowager with such a cold attitude.
The Empress Dowager's face turned deathly pale.
The Empress Dowager remained silent, while the Emperor coldly said, "Your Majesty knows perfectly well that I will not kill the Empress before the adulterer is identified, yet you are still so eager to send Granny Zhao to the Cold Palace to take the Empress's life. Is Your Majesty so afraid that I will find out who the adulterer who is having an affair with the Empress is?!"
The Emperor's voice grew increasingly sharp, and by the end, even the Empress Dowager panicked.
The Empress Dowager said, "That kind of poisonous woman, you shouldn't have stopped me from ordering her to die that day. If you had kept her alive for even one more day, the news would have spread. I was only thinking of the Emperor's reputation..."
The emperor laughed upon hearing this.
Even now, the Empress Dowager still tries to gloss over the situation and offer excuses, but the Emperor doesn't want to hear a single word of it. He directly interrupts her, "Who exactly is the adulterer?!"
The Empress Dowager's voice abruptly stopped. Feeling guilty, she eventually became somewhat angry. "Instead of questioning the Empress, the Emperor comes to interrogate me!"
"Is it King Cheng?!"
It took the Emperor almost all his strength to ask that question.
He couldn't accept that the Empress and his own brother had betrayed him at the same time, and he couldn't accept that the Empress Dowager knew about it and still helped Prince Cheng hide it from him and clean up the mess for him.
After being hit by multiple blows, even the emperor didn't know how he managed to hold on.
No wonder Yan'er asked Zhao Yuanzheng to prescribe some calming medicine for him. If he hadn't had that bowl of medicine before coming here, he probably would have vomited blood and died on the spot from anger.
The Emperor stared intently at the Empress Dowager, whose face was deathly pale. She murmured, but could not utter a single word for a long time.
The Emperor had lost his patience. "Is the Empress Dowager truly determined to protect Prince Cheng to the very end?!"
The Empress Dowager wanted to deny it, but things had come to this point, and she could no longer hide it from him. She had never felt so desperate. Tears blurred her vision, and she choked out, "You are all flesh and blood of mine. He has been bewitched and has done such a foolish thing. What am I supposed to do? Just watch you brothers kill each other?"
Who can understand the difficulties she faces as a mother?
The Empress Dowager felt increasingly heartbroken as she thought about it.
The Emperor said coldly, "The Empress Dowager didn't want to see me and Prince Cheng turn against each other, and she did her best to cover for him. But how much does the Empress Dowager know about what he's been doing behind the scenes?"
The Empress Dowager was startled and blurted out, "What has he been doing behind my back?"
The Emperor looked at the Empress Dowager and said, "What Wangzhou has isn't gold mines at all, it's iron mines!"
“The Prince of Cheng discovered an iron mine in his fiefdom, but concealed it and mined it privately for two years. What is he planning to do? Do I need to tell the Empress Dowager?”
The Empress Dowager felt a chill run down her spine.
She remembered that the Emperor had said there was a gold mine in the fiefdom, so she didn't insist anymore and agreed to let the Emperor change the fiefdom for Prince Cheng. When she returned from the Imperial Study, she told Prince Cheng about the gold mine, and Prince Cheng's reaction was indeed a bit strange.
Mining gold illegally might only involve embezzling some money, but iron ore mining is more than just about money. With iron ore, one can manufacture weapons and recruit soldiers...
The Empress Dowager grew increasingly alarmed. She wanted to say she knew nothing about it, but the Emperor gave her no chance to speak and turned to leave.
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