Xuanyuan Hao looked at these incompetent people, and was furious. He then looked at Zhang Ru and the others. The Queen saw that none of them could escape, so she hurried to the front, bowed, and knelt down: "Your concubine has failed to teach well."
Defei and others quickly followed and knelt at the back, forming a long row, neatly arranged.
The Queen knelt down. Wang Suwen and Zhang Guanghe saw that it was an inopportune time to come, so they decided to join in the fun.
Just as the two ministers were about to pay their respects, Xuanyuan Hao stood up and said to them, "Let's go to the study."
Xuanyuan Hao came out and stood outside, rubbing his brow, wondering if he was waiting for the two ministers. Inside, a commotion erupted, presumably surrounding Zhang Ru. Zhang Ru's voice was gentle, "If you all don't want to go to the academy, then let's go somewhere else." Inside, there was a hushed cheer.
Xuanyuan Hao's lips curled upward. When he was young, he had a bad temper, was hard and stubborn, and Zhang Ru had suffered a lot. Sometimes he felt sorry for her when he recalled the past. When she came over and knelt, he felt uncomfortable, but he couldn't say anything to soften her.
Zhang Ru looked at these children and thought they were all good. For the sake of the prince and these children, she couldn't give up... When Xuanyuan Hao wanted to take Wang Xipei into the palace and saw her portrait, she felt disheartened and wronged. The queen must have also thought about who to love.
But in the dream, these children were brutally murdered by Huang Mengling, and except for the fifth prince who escaped, none of them had a good end. After the crown prince died a bloody death after being shot by eighty-three arrows, Zhang Ru's last light was extinguished.
She calmly and carefully pulled out every arrow from the thirteen-year-old boy's body, then sat quietly holding the corpse.
She knew that Xuanyuan Hao, with whom she had long since run out of things to say, had been out that night for some reason, but he would eventually leave. When he finally left at dawn, she could finally be free. The side room where Zhang Ru lived, a cold palace, erupted in flames, and she finally left without a care in the world.
Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, her soul could not return, leaving her to witness her own death, Xuanyuan Hao as if carved from wood, while Huang Mengling brutally murdered the other princes and princesses. Huang Mengling had the eldest princess stabbed in the throat with a red-hot iron rod, leaving her unable to speak or eat. Without medical care or medicine, she died after eight days of agony.
Huang Mengling resented the fact that the eldest princess, as Xuanyuan Hao's only daughter, was deeply favored by him, and she also resented her speaking up for Empress Zhang Ru. Whenever Huang Mengling attempted to harm Zhang Ru and her son, the eldest princess, upon learning of the situation, would urge her father, Emperor Xuanyuan Hao, to speak out. Her eloquent and intelligent words would expose Huang Mengling's lies. The eldest princess would simply expose her lies and stop her from harming others, but Huang Mengling's revenge on her was extremely cruel.
After the death of the Crown Prince and the eldest princess, the Second and Third Princes hid in the dark with bows and arrows and attempted to shoot Huang Mengling. They were only teenagers after all, and Xuanyuan Hao had sent a secret guard to protect Huang Mengling. Not only did they fail, but they also exposed themselves. The secret guard had been sent by Xuanyuan Hao to protect Zhang Ru a long time ago, but Xuanyuan Hao later said that he didn't need the Queen anymore, so he assigned it to Huang Mengling instead.
Huang Mengling had the Second and Third Princes, along with their mother, tied with ropes by their necks, each one hanging on tiptoe. They were tied together, each with their own ropes, so if one side gave way, the balance would be broken, and the other would perish. The four of them held out for seven days and nights, even refusing to sleep, their bodies covered in feces and urine, before ultimately dying tragically. Huang Mengling sneered, "You're talking about a mother-son relationship, but it only lasted seven days?"
The Fourth Prince had no choice but to write a memorial to Xuanyuan Hao, hiding it among the ministers' memorials, hoping that his father would see it. However, it was discovered by the young eunuch Huang Mengling had placed beside Xuanyuan Hao.
Huang Mengling ordered the Fourth Prince to read aloud, and if he stopped, she would have someone chop Concubine Su with a knife. The Fourth Prince didn't dare to drink water or go to the toilet, and he didn't dare to stop reading even when his throat was bleeding. He didn't know until his death that three days ago, he stopped reading once because he choked on his saliva, and the knife choked his mother so deep that the bone was visible. Concubine Su had already bled to death.
The only one who escaped in the dream was the Fifth Prince. Fortunately, Li Baozhu and the Fifth Princess were not in the dream.
In her dream, Zhang Ru hadn't imagined she would be so desperate even if she died. She kept urging Xuanyuan Hao to check on the other children, who were suffering from the pain of wanting to live but not being able to die, struggling in despair. But she was dead, and Xuanyuan Hao couldn't hear or see her. He just sat there in a daze...
But it was he who gave Huang Mengling the title of Ming Guifei and the power to assist in managing the six palaces. Except for not abolishing Zhang Ru's position as queen, Huang Mengling was the only one in power among the six palaces. She had money, people, guards, and even a group of her own "death squads". At the beginning, these servants dealt with other concubines, princes and princesses in the palace for Huang Mengling, but they were just minor fights. Xuanyuan Hao never punished them, and they gradually became bolder. Later, Huang Mengling told them that based on what they had done for her, if the other concubines, princes and princesses did not die, as long as they were caught by them, they would all die without a burial place.
So, these servants became Huang Mengling's "death squad." Under these circumstances, Zhang Ru's two personal maids had already died, and she had been banished to a deserted palace resembling a cold palace. Besides not being deposed as the empress, what else did she have? Yet, even in this situation, Xuanyuan Hao was still worried about her bullying Huang Mengling. This was a lesson she deserved for bullying others...
Zhang Ru closed her eyes... After all, her caution over the past ten years made reality different from her dreams. The prince did not die at the age of thirteen, and the other children were also fine. They grew up, the prince, the second prince, and the third prince were all married, and the fourth and fifth princes were also going to discuss marriages.
In reality, there was such a lovely Fifth Princess, and her four personal maids were still there. Xuanyuan Hao hadn't done what he had done in his dream, after all. He couldn't give up. He was in his prime, and anything could happen...
Wang Suwen came back and sent someone to tell Wang Lingyi that the Queen was looking for a place to hold a birthday banquet for the fifth princess.
Wang Lingyi immediately thought of the hot spring villa under her own name.
The hot spring villa that her mother, Shen, gave her was already quite good. She recently had someone renovate it. The place was not too big, but it was enough for the queen to hold a birthday banquet at home.
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