Mu Jingheng arrived after the court session. The Empress wanted to find out Mu Jingheng's true "identity," so she created a time for him and Xu Xinning to meet.
After Mu Jingheng and the others left, he couldn't wait to grab Xu Xinning's hand and looked at her with great restraint, saying, "Xin'er, is it you who's back?"
Xu Xinning looked at him and smiled without saying a word.
Mu Jingheng's eyes reddened, and before Xu Xinning could speak, he began to recount his experiences.
"After you passed away, I followed you, thinking that when I entered the King of Hell's palace, I could help you fend off the little devils. I never expected to open my eyes and find myself here."
It was a battlefield on the border; I crawled out from piles of dead bodies.
Xu Xinning: "When did this happen?"
Mu Jingheng: "Last year."
Xu Xinning: "So that means you arrived here a year earlier than me?"
Mu Jingheng: "To be precise, it was one year and four months, which was shortly after your accident."
Hsu Hsin-ning: "You must have been very confused back then, right?"
Mu Jingheng nodded and smiled: "When I saw the corpses all over the ground, all wearing ancient battle robes, I thought I had accidentally wandered into some film crew."
Fortunately, this body retains its memories, which allowed me to slowly adapt.
Xu Xinning then asked, "Is your space still there?"
Mu Jingheng shook his head and said, "The original one is gone. It's become an arms factory under my group. But thankfully, I was able to quickly end the war on the border and come back to find you."
Do you know? When I rushed back, I happened to run into the Second Prince and the master performing a soul-summoning ritual for you. The scene was just like the one we saw in the murals in your tomb. When the master saw me, he was very excited and said that the catalyst for your soul-summoning had finally appeared. At the time, I didn't understand, but later, when he had me drip my blood onto the red ropes connected to various parts of your body, I realized that I was the catalyst they were talking about.
After being reminded like this, Xu Xinning realized that something was wrong.
The presence of a tomb, and the fact that the guards voluntarily became its guardians, can only mean that she had failed to summon the spirit.
So her return this time must be related to Mu Jingheng's time travel. If it weren't for his arrival, she would have died soon after.
Xu Xinning: "According to the original plan, since you didn't come, I didn't have any triggers, so it ended there."
Mu Jingheng nodded: "That should be the case."
Xu Xinning asked curiously, "Logically speaking, we should have arrived one after the other, so why is there such a big difference in the time it took for us to come back?"
Mu Jingheng: "I don't know which link went wrong. This past year has been really agonizing. I seem to have experienced the panic of not having you again. If it weren't for the fact that there have been so many things going on in the past year, I don't know how I would have gotten through it."
By the way, did you know that it was your wet nurse who harmed you?
Xu Xinning: "I guessed it. If it weren't for the person I trust most, how could I have gotten infected?"
Mu Jingheng pulled Xu Xinning down to sit and continued, "After your accident, the Emperor and Empress ordered everyone in your palace to be taken into custody. But you weren't well, and the country was beset by internal and external troubles, so it was really difficult. The Crown Prince personally investigated your affairs, peeling back the layers one by one until he finally found your wet nurse. At the time, the Empress couldn't believe it, after all, this person was one of her confidantes, someone she had saved and who had followed her for so many years; she had long regarded her as family. The Empress was temporarily possessed and fell ill for a long time, fortunately, the Ghost Physician stayed by her side the whole time."
Hsu Hsin-ning: "It was indeed surprising that she could betray us. My mother placed her in my palace precisely because she trusted her so much."
Mu Jingheng: "Greed is the root of all evil!"
Xu Xinning: "What exactly happened? Based on my understanding of her, I still don't quite believe she would kill me."
Mu Jingheng: "Her eldest son was set up and incurred huge gambling debts. They said that if he couldn't pay them back, they would take the lives of his entire family."
Xu Xinning smiled. How many trials and tribulations had the wet nurse gone through with them! How could she possibly not be able to handle such a simple situation?
Although she was just a wet nurse, which minister wouldn't be somewhat afraid of her when she went out?
Needless to say, she could handle anything, even gambling debts, and even matters involving human life.
Xu Xinning: "Is there something else going on here?"
Mu Jingheng nodded and said, "There are two groups of people who set this up. One group is your royal uncle's people, and the other group is the Hu people."
Xu Xinning: "Were they already in cahoots?"
Mu Jingheng nodded: "They colluded from within and without, creating trouble to distract the Emperor and the Crown Prince, and then achieve their goal of usurping the throne."
Xu Xinning: "He wants to usurp the throne? And he's cooperating with the Hu people?"
I don't really have any impression of this royal uncle, Xu Xinning, mainly because he's usually so unremarkable.
The only one who shared the same mother as the emperor was his aunt who kept male concubines. As for his uncles and other imperial relatives, they were all banished to their fiefdoms. Only his weak and insignificant uncle remained in the capital.
The emperor, out of consideration for his poor health and fear that he might die on the way to his fiefdom, softened his heart and allowed him to stay. He never expected that he would endure hardship and have such great ambition.
However, given his physical condition, even if the throne were given to him, would he be able to bear it?
Having ambition is fine; who born into royalty doesn't have some ambition? But what he shouldn't have done was get involved with the Hu people.
Xu Xinning: "What benefits did he promise the wet nurse?"
Mu Jingheng: "He arranged for his eldest son to marry the wet nurse's daughter, who became the heir apparent's concubine."
Xu Xinning scoffed: "She betrayed him just because he was a concubine of a prince?"
Mu Jingheng: "He also promised her a high-ranking official position. Most importantly, her husband promised that as long as she cooperated, he would dismiss all the concubines in the house and stay with her from now on."
Xu Xinning couldn't help but burst into laughter: "Idiot, she actually believed that? I don't know what kind of drug that man gave her to make her insist on marrying him."
To save face for her and ensure a more comfortable life in her husband's family, the Empress Dowager gave her a large dowry. But old habits die hard. While she was pregnant, the man was caught having an affair with a maid in the house. He even cried to the Empress Dowager, who couldn't do anything about it and could only give him a few words of reprimand, which calmed him down for a while.
After she gave birth to her eldest son, that man immediately promoted two of her maids to be his concubines.
As you know, although many people follow the example of the Emperor and Empress, being deeply devoted to their husbands and marrying only one wife, that is how society is. Men can have multiple wives and concubines. How can you expect the Empress to stand up for her again?
The Empress Dowager advised her that no matter how many concubines that man brought, as long as the Empress Dowager was there, her position as the head mistress of the household would not be shaken. However, there was one more thing she needed to be firm about.
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