Gu Tang shouted coldly, and the palace servants beside him stopped what they were doing.
The candlelight in the East Palace was dim. Nanny Wang dragged her fat body and panted heavily. After a while, she looked up and saw the expression of the prince who was about to kill someone. She kowtowed quickly, "Prince, please spare my life, please spare my life, I was just following your orders!"
The current Nanny Wang is very different from the arrogant person she was back then.
"Whose orders are you obeying?" Gu Tang's eyes were extremely cold.
Nanny Wang was stunned for a moment, obviously not wanting to say anything. Shen Qingqiu spoke coldly at this time, "You poisoned the Crown Princess, and you are already dead. If you don't confess now, you will die immediately. If you confess, you may die a few days later."
Of course, there was no way out after what happened. Nanny Wang also figured it out now, and her whole body collapsed. "I will say anything. It was the Queen. It was the Queen who asked me to do it!"
"You are talking nonsense!" The prince said angrily, "Even if my mother doesn't like the Crown Princess, how could she possibly harm the baby in her belly?"
Wang Qingluo also struggled to get up. Looking at the people in front of her who were killed, she certainly wanted to know who the murderer was behind the scenes.
"Your Highness, please understand. I dare not lie. It was indeed the Queen who ordered me to do so. Otherwise, even if I had the guts to murder the Crown Princess, I would not be able to do so!" At this point, Nanny Wang reported in detail, "And what your Highness said is wrong. The Queen only wanted the Crown Princess... The Crown Princess died silently. She did not intend to harm the baby in her belly."
Shen Qingqiu also said: "This medicine is a secret recipe. If ordinary people drink it, it will certainly nourish the body, but if a pregnant woman drinks it, it will only replenish the mother's blood and qi to the fetus. After a long time, the fetus will of course be healthy, but the mother will die without knowing how she died."
Nanny Wang was stunned. When she heard that a normal person would be fine after drinking the medicine, she immediately regretted it!
If she had held on a little longer and drank the medicine, wouldn't she have been able to escape punishment?
"How can you, a bitch, slander my mother's innocence!" The prince was unwilling to believe that the queen was responsible for this. "Come here, take this bitch to the private prison. I will interrogate her tomorrow." Shen Qingqiu looked at the prince with a cold voice, but did not say much. He just hugged Wang Qingluo, who was trembling with fear, into his arms. "Don't be afraid. I'm here. Those evil spirits dare not approach you."
Two lines of clear tears flowed from Wang Qingluo's tightly closed eyes, and she just hugged Shen Qingqiu even harder.
——
Gu Tang did not waste any time. He went to the palace to pay his respects to Queen Pei before dawn the next day.
"Why is the prince here at this time?" Queen Pei had just gotten up.
She looked at the sky. It was so early that even the moonlight had not faded. To cheer her up, the maid next to her said, "His Royal Highness the Crown Prince is filial and cares about you, Your Majesty."
No one dislikes hearing such words. Empress Pei smiled and picked up her favorite kingfisher. "The Crown Princess has been ill recently. I have noticed that the Crown Prince has lost a lot of weight these days. I have asked the palace maids to prepare some nourishing food."
"yes."
"Call the prince in."
Gu Tang came in, but he threw Nanny Wang to the ground with his guards. Queen Pei's expression changed, "Prince, what do you mean by this? Bringing troops into the palace, have you forgotten the rules?"
Gu Tang bowed his hands, "It's not that I forgot the rules, but mother, this slave dared to slander you for poisoning the Crown Princess, so this slave came to ask mother how to deal with this slave!"
Empress Pei was furious when she heard the prince's words. "You keep calling her a lowly maid. Have you forgotten that she is my servant? Prince, has your master taught you all your knowledge of poetry, literature and etiquette?"
Gu Tang's anger calmed down a little, "Please forgive me, mother. Since this lowly maid dared to poison the Crown Princess, if it was really arranged by someone, wouldn't the East Palace and even mother be in danger?"
Empress Pei looked at him for a while and said, "If you have something to say, just say it. We are mother and son. There is no need to test me like this."
The prince then said, "Then please tell me, mother, whether what this slave girl said is true or not?"
Queen Pei looked at the prince, "So what? Are you going to become an enemy of your mother for a woman?"
At this point, the prince could not help but take a step back, with an expression of disbelief on his face, "Mother, the Crown Princess is my wife, and she is pregnant with my child, why are you..."
"I did this all for you!" Empress Pei looked at the prince with dismay, "I told you a long time ago to find a way to get rid of the Crown Princess. Since you don't want to, I, as your mother, will naturally help you to be the bad guy!"
"Why?"
"The Gu family is now very powerful. Your father is going to divide the military power. Then Shen Qingqiu is a popular figure in everyone's eyes. If you marry Shen Qingqiu, you will marry half of the power of the Gu family. Do you want to give up the power you have obtained to others?!"
Gu Tang was not unaware of what was happening in the court, "But I'm already married?"
"If you can marry, you can divorce!" Empress Pei said in hatred, "Anyone who is useless to us should be eliminated. How can you ascend the throne in the future with such a woman's heart? How can my mother rely on you?"
The prince gritted his teeth. In his heart, he knew that it was his mother who did it, but if she really admitted it, he would not know what to do. Was he really going to avenge his mother in order to avenge his wife? "Mother, as the crown prince, I am destined to be the heir to the throne. Why do you have to fight for it?"
"You are more than one son of your father. Others are eyeing you covetously, but you don't fight for it at all. Even if you are in the position, it will be taken away by others sooner or later!"
Gu Tang half-knelt down, covering his face in pain. Could he say that it was wrong to be so devoted to his mother?
"I think the Crown Prince is not in a good mood today. You'd better return to the East Palace to recuperate as soon as possible!" Queen Pei gave an order, and the Crown Prince was asked to leave the palace.
When he returned to the East Palace in a daze, he saw Shen Qingqiu feeding Wang Qingluo medicine. Wang Qingluo, who did not take the strong medicine today, was obviously in much better spirits than before. She was drinking the medicine in small sips and chatting with Shen Qingqiu from time to time.
"The prince is back." Shen Qingqiu stood up slightly and saluted to the prince.
The prince nodded at her, and Shen Qingqiu looked at Wang Qingluo again, "I was in a hurry to leave and didn't tell my family. I have to go back now. I will come to see you tomorrow. Don't worry." Wang Qingluo just nodded.
The prince escorted Shen Qingqiu to the door, looking as if he wanted to say something but hesitated.
"Your Highness, if you have something to say, just speak up." Shen Qingqiu said.
The prince sighed and said, "It was indeed my mother's doing. My mother felt that Princess Kangle was favored by the emperor, and if I married you, you would be much more useful to me than the Crown Princess." Shen Qingqiu was such a smart person, and the prince had already said this, so there was no reason he couldn't understand.
"What does the prince think?" Shen Qingqiu asked.
If the prince's words showed that he valued power more than Wang Qingluo, then as Wang Qingluo's good friend, she would of course help Wang Qingluo escape from this sea of suffering, and she would not be afraid even of the prince.
"Please don't laugh at me, Princess." The prince smiled and touched the cold stone pillar beside him. "I was born in an imperial family. My mother is the queen. I was made the prince when I was eight years old. Everyone in the world thinks that being the crown prince is an extremely noble status. Seeing that I became the prince, everyone came to congratulate me, but no one asked me if I wanted to be the prince."
"The Crown Prince is second only to the Crown Prince, and above everyone else. Don't you like this position?"
The prince shook his head. "What does an eight-year-old child know? But the longer I stay in this position, the more I feel that it is lonely at the top." He looked at the bright moon in front of him. "There are no fathers and sons, no brothers in the royal family. And all I want in my life is the warmth that ordinary people have."
He was given all the princesses he wanted, but if he continued to sit on the throne of crown prince, he would lose the person he cherished most.
"Crown Prince?" Shen Qingqiu was a little confused about him.
The prince smiled bitterly and said, "Everyone thinks being an emperor is easy. Yes, of course it is easy to be an emperor, enjoying the wealth of the world. But I saw the people in dire straits. The emperor is the emperor, the father of all the people. I have seen the starving people everywhere, I have seen the people bleeding like a river, at that time I was just scared."
At this point, the prince shook his head and stopped calling himself "I can't sleep or eat well being this prince. All I have learned over the years is the art of factional struggle. I think my talent and knowledge are not enough to rule the world, so how can I bring well-being to the people?" All he wanted to do from the beginning to the end was to be a free and easy prince.
Shen Qingqiu never expected to hear such words from the mouth of this most precious person in the world, "Your Highness is a person of great compassion."
If he had not been born at the wrong time, Gu Tang could definitely have been a king who maintained the status quo.
But now, with internal and external troubles, his wisdom and kindness have become a hindrance. Gu Tang smiled, "It's just a woman's kindness, princess, please forgive me."
“Don’t worry, Your Highness. You may not be unable to achieve your goal in the future.” Shen Qingqiu said this, and then looked at the sky. “It’s getting late. I’ll take my leave now.”
After leaving the East Palace, Shen Qingqiu returned to the Marquis' Mansion. After lunch, she asked Jin Cai to release a carrier pigeon. In the afternoon, she asked Tu Jiu to harness the carriage, and several people took the carriage to a villa in the suburbs of Beijing.
"Girl, we're here." Jin Cai jumped out of the car first and lifted the curtain of the sedan chair.
Shen Qingqiu picked one immediately. From a distance, there were picturesque scenery with mountains and clear water. He was quite good at choosing a place.
"County gentleman... no, the princess is here?" When she looked over at the sound, she saw that the tall and slender handsome man was actually dressed like a free-spirited fisherman.
"Long time no see, Your Highness the Ninth Prince." Shen Qingqiu said with a smile.
Gu Yanwei invited him into the room: "Wang Xi, serve tea." The two hadn't seen each other for half a year, and there were some changes. Gu Yanwei's youthfulness had now transformed into youthfulness, and he looked a bit like a scholar in his frailty. Shen Qingqiu looked at the handsome face in front of him and couldn't help but look at it longer.
Noticing something was wrong with him, he quickly looked away.
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