It was raining heavily outside. The raindrops hit the ground, creating a layer of mist that enveloped the Haotang Palace in a haze.

Inside the vermilion palace, the young Queen Qi was looking at the young man in front of her with a look of reproach: "Didn't I tell you to come after the rain stopped? Why did you come now?"

"Your Majesty has summoned me, so how dare I delay?"

The Queen Qi spoke in a reproachful tone, but her eyes showed joy: "You! It's nothing big that your Majesty has summoned you. I just wanted to discuss something with you..."

Before the Queen Qi finished her words, there was a sudden noise outside the house. The raindrops from the eaves splashed on the stone slabs. This should have been a very poetic thing, but now it was crushed by a series of rapid and powerful footsteps.

Outside the palace door, it seemed that someone in the palace was hurriedly talking about something. Empress Xiao Qi and Prince Lu looked at each other in surprise and stood up.

"Prince?" Empress Xiao Qi looked at the newcomer in surprise, "What are you doing?"

Qin Yi stood at the palace door with his back to the light. The magnificent palace and the heavy rain behind him became the background. Only he was elegant and slender, like a sharp sword that cut through the gray rain curtain, and the whole palace seemed to be bright because of it.

Perhaps because he was in a hurry, Qin Yi was still covered with mist. Lan Yu stood behind Qin Yi with a look of hesitation on her face, as if she wanted to stop Qin Yi, but she failed.

"What am I doing here? Doesn't the Queen really know?"

The Queen frowned. She could sense something unusual. Qin Yi obviously didn't care about the Queen's answer. He walked slowly into the palace, looking around at the eunuchs and maids standing around him. He asked, "Who dropped the ice cube? Who spilled the soup?"

Lan Yu shuddered slightly when she heard this. She realized that the prince had come to call her to task.

"You won't tell me? You didn't do your job well, and now you're protecting the guilty slave." Qin Yi looked down at him, but his voice suddenly became cold. "No one has admitted it yet?"

The palace maids and eunuchs couldn't bear it any longer, and knelt down with a thump: "Prince, spare my life, it was my clumsy hands that bumped into the Crown Princess."

All the palace maids hung their heads in fear. When the little queen saw this scene, she was furious: "Prince, this is my Phoenix Palace, what do you mean by this?"

"So you know you're the empress." Qin Yi turned around and looked at the young empress with a sneer in his eyes, "I thought the empress couldn't even manage the people in her own palace."

Lan Yu broke out in a cold sweat without realizing it. She took a deep breath and stepped forward to greet Qin Yi, "Your Highness, today these palace maids were clumsy and accidentally bumped into the Crown Princess. This is because I, the housekeeper, didn't teach them well. Please forgive me, Your Highness."

"One of them can't even hold a bowl steadily, and these people carrying ice can even spill the ice. In the Forbidden Palace, if you can't even do such a small thing, then what's the use of your eyes and hands?" Qin Yi's eyes were cold, and his words made people feel cold from the bottom of their hearts. "Since the Queen can't discipline them, I will do it for you. Come on, drag them away.

" The people on the ground were terrified when they heard this. Those who let the prince take action would not have a good end. They didn't care about the harem or the noise, and crawled towards the Queen with their hands and feet, shouting incoherently: "Queen, spare my life, Prince, spare my life, Queen, save me!"

But before they crawled to the Queen, their arms were lifted up. The eunuchs who took action had obviously practiced internal martial arts, with a stable base and bright eyes. They stretched out their hands and firmly restrained the people on the ground, and dragged them out roughly.

The Queen clenched her palms tightly. It was obvious who Qin Yi was doing this for. Prince Lu couldn't stand it any longer, and angrily said, "Prince, don't be so arrogant. This is in my mother's palace. My mother is the empress. Aren't you afraid that your father will find out?"

Qin Yi just chuckled after hearing this, and the laughter was clearly heard by Prince Lu: "You are going to get married and marry, but you still bring up the emperor when something happens. You are really a nobody."

Prince Lu was furious, and the veins on his hands suddenly popped up: "You..."

"Prince Lu!" Empress Xiao Qi shouted, stopped Prince Lu, and then looked at Qin Yi coldly, "Prince is really awesome. You can deal with anyone in this palace. The emperor governs the world with filial piety. You deceive the emperor and disrespect your mother like this. Aren't you afraid of being laughed at by the world?"

"Don't flatter yourself. My mother is Empress Wenxiao, the first wife who was married after three matchmakers and nine engagements, and you, what are you?" The Queen of Qi

choked. She was already five months pregnant when she entered the palace. The ceremony of her coronation was naturally very simple. She just put on a phoenix crown and went into the palace in a car. It was completely incomparable to the grand ceremony of the coronation of the Queen of Qi. This was the pain of the Queen of Qi for many years. She thought that the winner was the king. As long as she became the queen, no one would dare to mention the things of the past. In fact, this matter was indeed deliberately avoided by everyone, but who could guarantee what these people would say about her once they turned around? And people of higher status, such as Qin Yi, Chu Jinyao, and even the old lady in the palace, such as Concubine Shu, dared to look down on her openly.

The Queen was extremely angry, but she calmed down. She straightened her sleeves and smiled at Qin Yi frivolously and complacently: "It turns out that the prince still cares about the things of the past, but who said that I am the empress now?"

Everyone knows how to step on others' sore spots, and it's even more shameless to look at someone.

The Queen was so shameless. Qin Yi looked at the Queen with disdain, but he only glanced at her and turned his eyes away, as if he felt that looking at her again would dirty his eyes.

Qin Yi said: "You are worthy of the position of Empress. It's not that no one knows about the dirty things you have done in the past few years since you entered the palace, but I am too lazy to care about you. But you should never, ever, set your sights on her. Queen, you should be thankful that nothing happened to Jin Yao today, otherwise it would be the clan house that would be standing here now. I have kept all the evidence of you harming the heir to the throne. If this matter is reported by the clan house, "I know that even if the emperor wants to protect you, I'm afraid he can't. I advise you to chant Buddha and burn incense every day to bless the Crown Princess to be safe and sound. If she has any problems, you will have to go back to the position you climbed from."

Empress Xiao Qi was angry at Qin Yi's contempt, but was also shocked by the threat in Qin Yi's voice: "You dare! The emperor clearly ordered..."

Qin Yi laughed, and the sarcasm in it was not concealed. Empress Xiao Qi also realized belatedly that her thoughts were too naive.

The emperor did issue a gag order, not allowing them to spread the matter. The servants who were present that day were fine, but who was Qin Yi, why would he care about a mere command?

Qin Yi followed his advice and concealed the matter because he was giving the emperor face, but if Qin Yi really didn't care about his feelings and revealed the matter, would the emperor still depose him for such a thing? Qin Yi would at most be reprimanded or confined for a few days, but it would be the end of Xiao Qihou. The public opinion and the spit in the court alone could drown her alive. There

is no private matter in the royal family. The harem and the royal heirs have never been the emperor's business alone.

Empress Xiao Qi knew that Qin Yi was not such a person who would do something without a purpose, but she did not dare to gamble. If Qin Yi really released the news, or even worse, secretly pushed public opinion, what would Empress Xiao Qi do when people attacked her? Would she rely on the emperor? Even if the emperor could save her life, could he save her position as empress?

Empress Xiao Qi was so angry that she was shaking all over, but she couldn't say a word as if her throat was strangled. When Prince Lu saw his mother being humiliated, he was furious and wanted to rush up to argue with Qin Yi.

But he was just a 15-year-old boy. The young masters in the capital obeyed him and praised him, but in front of his elder brother who entered the court to govern and joined the army when he was young, what capital did he have to compete with? Prince Lu was easily restrained by the eunuch beside Qin Yi. Prince Lu, a passionate young man, was faced with a group of rootless eunuchs and had no power to fight back at all. Qin Yi looked at Prince Lu with contempt, as if he was looking at an ignorant boy: "Prince Lu should marry a concubine, so it's better, so that you don't have to be like a baby who hasn't been weaned, hanging around your biological mother every day. Which prince in the palace is like you?"

Seeing her precious son being controlled, Empress Xiao Qi was almost furious: "How dare you, who gave you the courage to attack Prince Lu? And you, are you all blind? Why don't you go over and kill these dirty eunuchs!"

In the harem, even scolding people must be decent and elegant. Empress Xiao Qi used such an indecent word, which shows how much she hates Qin Yi. But it was just a scolding word, which didn't hurt or itch, so Qin Yi didn't care. He just waved his hand lightly, and the well-trained eunuch released Prince Lu, and then retreated respectfully behind Qin Yi. Qin Yi watched Xiao Qihou rush to Prince Lu's side, and the mother and son hugged each other as if they had been reborn. Seeing this, he smiled lightly and said, "I have a lot of evidence in my hands. If the queen wants to know, you can try it."

After Qin Yi finished speaking, he didn't even bother to look at the mother and son, and turned around and walked out. When he was about to go out, he suddenly stopped and said to the heavy rain outside: "The people in the empress's palace can't even do such a small thing as serving bowls. I think they are not good at serving people. The Crown Princess is in a serious condition, so I won't come to pay respects to her in the future."

The heavy rain came in force, and it was not until dusk that the sound of rain outside finally became smaller and stopped. The

rain was getting lighter, and the palace maids and eunuchs who were responsible for gathering information in each palace were finally able to go out as usual, and the news in the temporary palace began to spread.

The empress asked the Crown Princess to make soup by herself, the Crown Princess fainted in the rain, and the Crown Prince went to the Central Palace in the rain. These things, one by one, soon reached the ears of everyone in the harem.

"The Crown Princess fainted?"

"Yes." The former eunuch carefully looked at the emperor's face and said carefully, "Most women are weak and afraid of cold. The Crown Princess waited in the rain for so long, and it is possible that she was exhausted and couldn't hold on."

The emperor sighed and shook his head: "So many years have passed, and she is still like this." When he was young, he thought that Empress Qi's love of excellence and jealousy were girlish behaviors, but it was too ignorant to be so narrow-minded after becoming a mother.

The eunuch didn't dare to say anything. When the emperor thought you were good, everything was good. Once the emperor changed his mind, the advantage of affection became a disadvantage.

The emperor sighed for a while, but still felt that what happened today was outrageous. Not only Empress Qi, but Qin Yi was too rampant. Even if Empress Xiao Qi was an unkind mother, she was still the Empress of the Central Palace and the Emperor's legal wife, and should be decided by the Emperor. As a son and the Crown Prince, Qin Yi was sentencing servants and speaking rudely. How could this be?

The Emperor looked at the incense burner on the corner of the table in silence. The eunuch lowered his eyes and even deliberately lowered his breathing. For a while, the only sound in the hall was the sound of the rain outside. After a while, the emperor seemed to sigh and said, "I came to the temporary palace because I felt that the Forbidden City was stuffy, so I took everyone out to get some fresh air. As a result, Concubine Lian got into trouble, and then the Crown Princess got into trouble. It's even more unsettled than the palace. After this rain, the weather will probably get colder. You send an order to let the Ministry of Rites prepare and choose a day to return to the palace."