Chapter 69: Lord Xu is pregnant before marriage
There was nothing unusual at first, until she spread the tenth leaf, when she suddenly found that several young silkworms had their bodies stiff after eating the mulberry leaves.
Empress Yang was panic-stricken and didn't know whether the silkworms were dead or not.
Because Emperor Ming was right beside her, she did not dare to say anything. She used mulberry leaves to block the silkworms and continued to scatter the leaves, just hoping that the silkworm ceremony would be over quickly, as she always felt as if something was happening.
The musicians played festive music, creating a peaceful atmosphere.
"Oh! These silkworms don't eat mulberry leaves. Aren't they hungry?" A woman's voice suddenly came from the bottom of the stairs. Everyone looked in the direction of the voice and found that it was Concubine Yun.
"Don't you see what the occasion is today? What are you yelling about?" Emperor Ming blew his beard unhappily.
"Your Majesty, please forgive me!" Yunpin immediately knelt down and said, "I don't know if it's because I'm feeding it the wrong way, the silkworms won't eat it."
Fang Qianxue and the eldest princess exchanged glances. The silkworms fed by Xiao Mingjie didn't open their mouths much, and the ones fed by Fang Qianxue ate a few bites reluctantly and then lay down to sunbathe their bellies.
"Don't want to eat?" Emperor Ming frowned.
"Your Majesty, I don't know what went wrong," said another young concubine, "these silkworms started twitching after eating a few bites."
"Maybe it's because it's cold today, so the silkworms are shivering a little." Queen Yang said, and she began to shiver herself.
She has been presiding over the Silkworm Ceremony for several years, but this is the first time she has encountered such a strange thing.
Emperor Ming stood up and took a look at the young silkworms in the plaque. He was immediately furious and called the empress by her name: "Yang Yunxia! How did you feed the silkworms? Several of them died! If I hadn't come here in person today, would you have kept it a secret?"
He was not angry just about the silkworm farming, but about something else.
He had been sick frequently in recent years, unable to sleep at night and lacking energy during the day, so he handed over most government affairs to Yang and her brother Yang Shijun. However, he recently discovered that many things had become a mess, and the brother and sister had deceived their superiors and subordinates and done many terrible things.
"Your Majesty, please calm down! God bless Dayong!" The emperor was furious, and the ladies and officials knelt down in unison.
The musicians did not dare to play music and knelt down one after another.
"How dare you!" Emperor Ming was so angry that he was shaking. He shouted angrily to the eunuch beside him, "Investigate for me! Find out how these silkworms died!"
"Yes!" Wu Dayong hurriedly took the silkworm tray and asked the maid in charge of raising silkworms.
Fang Qianxue narrowed her eyes and glanced at the silkworm plaque, and quickly understood everything.
The leaves of this kind of mulberry leaves are just smaller, and they wither and turn yellow prematurely. After the silkworms eat them, their bodies become stiff and they need to wait a long time before they can eat again, but they will not die.
The old emperor probably thought the silkworms were dead because they were so stiff and motionless.
"Your Majesty! This is not the Queen's fault," a woman in a navy blue dress knelt down and kowtowed three times. "I am responsible for raising silkworms for the silkworm ceremony. I have been raising silkworms for three or four years. There were no problems in previous years, but this year's mulberry leaf harvest is not good."
"Why is the harvest so bad?" Emperor Ming tightly gripped the armrests of the dragon throne.
"I don't know why, but the mulberry leaves have started to wither and turn yellow before they grow up. All the mulberry trees in Shangjing are like this," the maid said with her head down. "I know that these mulberry leaves are not good, but there is really nothing I can do."
"Oh, didn't you say the weather was good? You told me that the mulberry leaf harvest was not good?" Emperor Ming raised his hand and overturned the backpack filled with mulberry leaves.
Xu Miaoyan was startled. Those were the mulberry leaves she picked, and the old emperor just tossed them away. This anger... was it directed at her?
There was a strange silence all around and no one dared to speak.
After a while, someone finally spoke.
"Your Majesty, I heard that the female officials who attended to the silkworm ceremony were unclean. Perhaps this is the reason," Concubine Song said carefully, "so this year's silkworm ceremony was punished by heaven."
"Divine punishment?!" The old emperor was most afraid of these two words.
It was because he suspected that the princes and court officials were in cliques for personal gain in his early years, so he killed half of the court officials and did not even show mercy to the princes. Later, disasters occurred frequently in Dayong, and there were rumors that he was punished by heaven because he had committed too many sins of killing.
"Your Majesty!" Empress Yang knelt down with a plop, holding onto the edge of Emperor Ming's clothes and crying, "Your Majesty, please calm down. This is my fault!"
Xu Miaoyan also knelt down slowly. She could feel the emperor's anger and was so scared that she didn't dare to look up.
"Princess Song! You said that the female official who tends to the silkworms is unclean. What's going on?" asked Emperor Ming.
Song Zhuyan recalled: "I also heard from others that Lord Xu had conceived a child before getting married, and secretly served as a silkworm maid without telling the Empress. Isn't this deceiving the Emperor?"
"Nonsense! Who said Xu was pregnant?" Queen Yang turned around and looked at Concubine Song viciously.
"If the Queen doesn't believe it, you can ask the imperial physician to take her pulse!" Concubine Song muttered smugly, "What's true can't be false, and what's false can't be true either."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
