Both the emperor and empress were stunned.
They never expected that the Cloud King would ask them such a question.
What do you mean by this?
The emperor spoke.
He believed he had treated his son well; aside from not letting him study governance, he tried his best to satisfy his son's every wish.
Few royal children live as freely and unrestrainedly as Prince Yun, so why would he be jealous of his brother and plot against him?
The Prince of Yun laughed, but then he cried. “Father has shown such favoritism that he still asks his son what he means.”
Your son wishes to ask, Father: Since Mother is unwilling to accept me for the sake of her son, why does Father also reject me? I am your own son.
The emperor frowned. "What nonsense are you talking about? When have your mother and I ever abandoned you?"
The Prince of Yun's expression of disappointment and sorrow deepened; it turned out that his father had long forgotten.
The Empress, however, seemed to realize something, and her face turned pale instantly.
Prince Yun noticed her reaction. "Mother, have you remembered? You wanted to kill me as soon as you became pregnant with me?"
Yes, the Empress remembers.
Not long after giving birth to the crown prince, she became pregnant again.
The Crown Prince's true parentage could not be revealed. The Empress worried that he would have a difficult life in this world as the late Emperor's posthumous son, so she wanted to spend more time with him.
In addition, having experienced persecution by the late emperor, she was still somewhat resistant to sexual relations at that time. The emperor was reluctant to force her, so the two rarely had sex. Even when they did, she would drink contraceptive soup in time.
But her father planted someone by her side and replaced her contraceptive soup with fertility drugs.
She unexpectedly became pregnant with the Cloud King.
The Crown Prince wanted to have an abortion, but the Emperor was worried that her body couldn't handle consecutive pregnancies, so he agreed.
But when I picked up the bowl of medicine...
The Empress closed her eyes briefly. "I admit that when I first became pregnant with you, I did consider abortion, but ever since you were born, I have loved you every single day..."
A sneer interrupted her, "If my maternal grandfather hadn't replaced your abortifacient with a fertility-enhancing one, I wouldn't have had any chance of giving birth."
"My father and mother paved the way for the Crown Prince in everything they did. You worried about his unstable position and wanted to have children later, never imagining I would be born. It was my maternal grandfather who gave me life."
"presumptuous."
For the first time, the emperor was angry with his son, saying, "How could you misunderstand your mother like this?"
If your mother hadn't been determined to keep you, even if your maternal grandfather had changed the medicine, she could have taken the abortion medicine again.
Your brother said you were studying medicine in secret, so you should know that there are many ways to induce a miscarriage.
The truth is, your mother didn't drink the medicine at all. She changed her mind that very day; she couldn't bear to leave you behind.
Thinking of the Empress's ambitious father, the Emperor continued, "Your maternal family has ulterior motives; you must discern their words carefully."
He understood from the second son's words that the second son was instigated by the Zheng family, the Empress's maternal family.
Back then, the father-in-law wanted to kill the crown prince and make Prince Fuyun the heir apparent. He also stirred up trouble in the court. In a fit of anger, the empress ordered the father-in-law to be executed at midnight and exiled the entire Zheng family to a distant place.
When the Zheng family left the capital, Prince Yun was still an uneducated child. How could he remember so many things? They must have kept in touch privately over the years.
It seems that he and the Empress were indeed merciful.
As the emperor had predicted, although the Zheng family had been demoted and removed from the capital, their ambitions had not diminished, and they had been secretly in contact with Prince Yun all these years.
Prince Yun, having been instigated by them for many years, was convinced that his parents were biased, and it was not something that could be changed by a few words from the Emperor and Empress.
“You are lying. Even if you are willing to give birth to me in the end, you will devote yourselves to teaching the prince and making him outstanding in everything he does.”
But all they did was let me and Prince Ning eat, drink, and have fun, as if they wished we were all incompetent fools so that no one would compete with the Crown Prince.
He looked at the emperor and cried, “The discord among the children is all due to the injustice of the parents. I can understand that the Empress Dowager favors her eldest son, but why are you so biased, Father? I am your eldest son.”
The emperor laughed in exasperation, “The Crown Prince’s excellence is due to his own hard work. When have I ever stopped you from working hard?”
Didn't you yourself repeatedly say that you only wanted to be a carefree prince, living a leisurely life?
“My parents favor my elder brother. I am worried that if I do not hide my talents, my elder brother will not tolerate me. My elder brother has not been close to me since childhood, and in the end, he and I do not share the same father.”
The pain in his leg made him pale, and he cried with tears streaming down his face. He knew that the only way to make his parents feel guilty and soften their hearts was to cry and complain about his grievances.
"Your subject does not want to be jealous of your elder brother. Your subject only wants to be loved by your parents and praised by the world."
At first, I never intended to harm my elder brother. It was only as he grew older that he became more and more distant from us, and the way he looked at me and Prince Ning was worse than that of strangers.
He also developed an increasingly regal air. During the autumn hunt, he attacked his father. At the time, I was unaware that it was a conspiracy by Kang Le and his associates; I only thought that my elder brother wanted to kill our father.
If he would even kill my father, how could he have spared me and my brother Ning? That's why I had someone assassinate him, all to save my own life..."
Prince Yun quickly reviewed what he had done to the Crown Prince: sending assassins to kill him and stealing his fiancée.
The latter had already broken off the engagement. The affair was consensual, and he could easily claim that Ye Wantang had seduced him, which was not enough to convict him.
The former was more important, so when he tearfully explained his reasons, he deliberately mentioned that the crown prince already had the aura of an emperor and that he had murdered the emperor, intending to provoke the emperor to be wary of the crown prince and thus protect his own son.
But Xie Tingzhou had heard enough and interrupted him, "Nonsense!"
Xie Tingzhou was stitching up his wound when he pulled hard, causing Yun Wang to be unable to say anything in pain.
He said slowly, "Among the three brothers, I am the one who is estranged from our parents. How can you say that I have any favoritism?"
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