When I returned to Luoyang Palace, it was already dark.

Linglong took Xia Sang downstairs to settle them down. Pei Yan explained the situation to Fu Xirui, and then accompanied Tao Ti back to Jixian Palace.

Tao Ti walked quietly to the couch and sat down, her back slouched, as if her soul had been taken away, she felt weak and powerless, her eyes were staring blankly.

It was not until a bony hand holding a celadon cup appeared before her that her dark eyes turned.

"Come, have a cup of tea." Pei Yan said softly.

"Thank you." Tao Ti took it.

The tea is warm, slightly bitter at first but sweet aftertaste.

Pei Yan sat down beside her, stared at her for a moment, and asked, "Since you left Prince Mu's mansion, you have been distracted. Are you still thinking about that?"

Tao Ti glanced at him, pursed her pink lips slightly, and nodded, "Yeah."

Pei Yan said, "Don't worry, Zhan Ping is watching over it, he will take care of it."

Tao Ti hummed solemnly, but the heaviness between his brows remained the same.

In silence, she drank the tea in the cup bit by bit, frowned, and said worriedly, "Your Highness, today's incident has made us at odds with Prince Mu's Mansion... Before leaving, I saw that Prince Mu and his wife looked very unhappy. Will they be desperate and retaliate against us..."

She still remembers that when Pei Yan took her away, Princess Mu's eyes seemed to be poisoned, gloomy and resentful.

It’s really... scary!

Pei Yan was stunned for a moment. It turned out that she was afraid of this.

He leaned over to her with his tall body, raised his hand, and placed his broad palm on her little head.

Tao Ti was still holding the cup in a daze. She raised her head in confusion and looked at him bewilderedly, "Your Highness?"

Pei Yan said in a low and pleasant voice, "Don't be afraid."

Taoti, "..."

Pei Yan's tone was gentle and calm, and he had the majestic aura of a superior, as if everything was under his control.

He said, "Trust me, I will handle it."

Tao Ti looked at his deep peach blossom eyes, and her tense heart gradually relaxed.

Since he said he could handle it, she believed him.

“Your Highness…”

"Um?"

"I believe you."

"good."

"Well... could you please take your hand off my head? I want to get something to eat."

“…”

Pei Yan was slightly startled, and he took his hand away from her head, laughing and saying, "I'm sorry."

It was because her little head was so nice to touch, her black hair was smooth and felt comfortable, and she seemed particularly well-behaved under his palm.

Tao Ti's fair face turned a little red. She put down the teacup and stood up.

Pei Yan called her and said, "You've been busy all day, and I think you're tired. Can we ask the kitchen to prepare dinner?"

Tao Ti shrugged his shoulders and sighed deeply, "Okay."

Although she didn't see the corpses with her own eyes, she felt depressed after thinking about them for a while, and her appetite was also very low. However, she got hungry quickly, and she couldn't sleep if she didn't eat at night.

Pei Yan ordered the kitchen to prepare some light porridge without any chicken, duck, fish or meat.

At night, the two of them quietly ate some mung bean porridge under candlelight.

After taking a shower and getting into bed, Tao Ti tossed and turned and couldn't fall asleep even though she was obviously very tired.

When she turned over again, Pei Shen extended his hand and pressed her shoulders.

Tao Ti froze instantly.

His body was facing her, his arms across her body. This posture was like he was holding her whole body in his arms, intimate and ambiguous...

Fortunately, she was facing away from him, otherwise, if she had been facing him, her temperature would have skyrocketed and she would have been cremated on the spot.

Pei Yan's somewhat lazy voice sounded behind her, "Aren't you sleepy?"

Tao Ti didn't dare to move, her voice trembling with nervousness, "Fortunately... I'm a little sleepy..."

“Dishonest.”

"……?"

"Tell me what you are thinking about," he asked.

Tao Ti didn't know how close he was. His arm was on her, and her nose was filled with the pleasant and refreshing scent of cold pine from his body, but their bodies were not touching, as if there was an almost invisible distance between them.

Her mind went blank and her heart beat fast. When she heard his question, she answered subconsciously, "I was wondering how Princess Mu and Prince Mu could be so mean! The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I was so angry that I couldn't sleep."

Pei Yan nodded lightly and thought to himself, the little girl is still too naive. People are evil and there are always worse than the worst.

Even the man lying next to her was not a good person.

Seeing that she was very tense, he was afraid that she would be tired, so he withdrew his hand, lay down again, closed his eyes and asked again, "What else are you thinking about?"

Tao Ti breathed a sigh of relief and whispered, "Are you still wondering what retribution they will get? Will the prince be in jail for life? Is Prince Mu really willing to kill his own relatives for the sake of justice? Princess Mu will definitely not let it go, right? Your Highness, you said you would make arrangements, so how do you plan to deal with it?"

She spoke out all the doubts in her heart in one breath.

Pei Yan's eyebrows moved slightly, "Want to know?"

Tao Ti said, "Yeah."

In the darkness, he chuckled twice, "You'll know in half a month at most."

Taoti, "......?"

Don't keep it so suspenseful!

The man next to her rubbed her hair lazily and said softly, "Ati, it's time to go to bed."

Tao Ti thought it was not a good idea to force him to ask for clarification in the middle of the night, so she just said softly, "Okay, go to sleep first."

She closed her eyes, put aside her messy thoughts, and didn't know how long it had been before she finally fell into a deep sleep.

After hearing her even breathing, Pei Yan turned over and hugged her from behind.

He hugged her tighter, buried his face in her shoulder, his eyes half closed, with desires surging in his eyes.

If one day, she discovered his meanness and unbearableness, and discovered that all his bright and beautiful appearances were just a pretense and a lie...

He didn't dare to think further.

The more I thought about it, the crazier those dark thoughts became.

He suddenly remembered what Uncle Feng said, if he really liked her, he should treat her well and not be like his father.

Of course he would be nice to her, as long as she stayed by his side and didn't leave him.

If she were to leave him...

He recalled some distant and blurry images——

In the picture, the father was crying while holding the body of the queen mother.

The king who was high and mighty and decisive in killing people cried so miserably and unbearably.

Later, the father saw him hiding in the corner, waved at him, hugged him and said, "Your mother abandoned us, father and son. Father is useless. She wants to leave, father can't keep her..."

In his memory, his father loved his mother deeply, completely putting aside his status as an emperor and doing his best to be good to her.

But my mother was always lukewarm towards my father and it seemed that she had never smiled at him.

He was very young at that time, and he went to ask Nanny Lan with confusion. Nanny Lan just said, "The feelings of adults are very complicated. When Your Highness grows up, maybe you will understand."

Matters of the heart are indeed complicated.

For example, at this moment, the more he cared, the more worried he was about gains and losses.

As the night deepened, Pei Yan fell asleep with the soft body in his arms, frowning.

………

News doesn't have long legs, but it spreads faster than anything else. In just one night, the news that Prince Mu was taken to prison spread like wildfire, and people in the streets and alleys were talking about it:

"Great! This evil prince who bullies men and women finally got his comeuppance!"

"Yes, good deeds will be rewarded and evil deeds will be punished. This time the prince came to Luoyang and got rid of this evil man for us. It really makes people happy!"

"My second aunt's next-door neighbor's third sister-in-law works at Prince Mu's mansion. I heard that it was the Crown Princess who first stood up to seek justice yesterday, which is why the matter was exposed. If the Crown Princess hadn't stepped forward, who knows how long these twenty-plus lives would have remained hidden in the well of Prince Mu's mansion!"

"She's actually the Crown Princess? This Crown Princess is really great. She can fight for the common people!"

"Yes, if it were someone else, they would probably turn a blind eye and do nothing! Previously, the young master beat a small vegetable vendor to death under the Sanli Bridge in the street. Didn't the vendor's family run to the government to complain? Those officials didn't do anything and directly drove the widow and orphan out. Alas, I heard that the family ended up in a miserable state. The family lost its pillar of support, and the youngest son was so sick that he had no money to treat the disease and died..."

"Alas, the people should not fight against the officials. If the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess hadn't seen this, I don't know how long the Mu Palace would have continued to be tyrannical!"

"We are so lucky to have such a prince and princess. But I heard that the prince is not in good health. I hope God will open his eyes and bless our prince!"

While rumors were rife outside, there was total silence inside Prince Mu's mansion.

After Princess Mu slowly woke up, she learned that the Crown Prince had been taken to prison and almost fainted again.

The maid beside her quickly pinched her Ren Zhong to help her calm down. Only then did she come to her senses. She did not even bother to put on her makeup properly. She just washed up casually and ran to find Prince Mu.

Prince Mu had just returned from prison and had not even had a sip of his hot tea when he saw the haggard Princess Mu running towards him.

He frowned and said impatiently, "Why did you come out instead of resting in the room?"

Princess Mu's face fell suddenly, tears welled up in her eyes, "My Lord, what should we do now? Xuan'er is our son, you can't just sit there and let him be bullied!"

Prince Mu took a deep breath and said to the housekeeper, "Go out first and close the door."

The butler agreed and left.

Only the couple were left in the house, with wisps of green smoke rising slowly from the animal-shaped incense burner.

Prince Mu said solemnly, "This is just too much of a coincidence."

Princess Mu stopped sobbing.

"That Xia Sang, who didn't take revenge earlier or later, chose to hurt Xuan'er when you invited the Crown Princess to your house, and made such a big fuss... And the Crown Prince, he came yesterday at such a coincidence..."

Prince Mu said coldly, "I thought about it for a long time last night, and went out to investigate this morning. I found that there are many suspicious points about Xia Sang. Xuan'er brought her out from Yancui Tower, but this Xia Sang is not a prostitute on record, but a maid who has only been in Yancui Tower for three days. Moreover, how did she know about the dry well in the backyard, and who told her that her sister was thrown into the dry well..."

Princess Mu's eyes suddenly widened, "Prince, you mean that there is a traitor in our house."

Prince Mu snorted, "I'm afraid this matter is not as simple as just an inside job."

Princess Mu was shocked and thought about it for a while. After a while, she asked in panic, "Did the Crown Prince find out something? Did he know that we were going to attack the Crown Princess?"

Prince Mu's face turned pale, he pursed his lips and said nothing.

After a moment, he said in a deep voice, "Don't panic too much. I wrote a letter to Chang'an last night... Even if the Crown Prince wants to prosecute Xuan'er, the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty must review it again and again. With the Zhou family in Chang'an, at least Xuan'er's life can be saved."

Princess Mu was startled, her lips were bitten until they were bloodless, and she murmured to herself, "Save a life, a life..."

She looked up at Prince Mu with a complicated look in her eyes, "Prince, if Xuan'er survives, can he still be the crown prince in the future?"

Prince Mu's mouth twitched, and he squinted his eyes at her, "How can a useless person be the crown prince again?"

Princess Mu's blood seemed to freeze.

Although I had already guessed what the answer would be, I still couldn't help but feel chilled when I heard him say it in person.

She also didn't know how she left the study.

Looking at the bright light outside the house, Princess Mu slowly raised her head, her numb eyes turned around, and a strong hatred surged in her heart.

She clenched her fists and gritted her teeth, "Crown Prince, Crown Princess..."

They destroyed her son, and she won't let them off easily!