One of the palace maids shrank back, then bit down on her resolution and spoke: “After the first two times, Your Majesty had actually not been intimate with Yuepin for a considerable period…”

“Your Majesty — do you trust me?” Hao Yue knelt ramrod straight. Nothing on her face betrayed the slightest panic, as though the Yuepin the maid described was someone else entirely.

The Emperor looked down at the golden needles trembling on his chest. How could he not trust her? If he had not trusted her, if he had not trusted her…

“Come, someone—”

“This servant has proof!” The maid, sensing disaster, cut off the Emperor’s words in a show of terrible disrespect. She had been a servant of Chief Eunuch Laifu. Had Yuepin not used the threat of the man waiting years for her outside the palace to coerce her, she would never have served Yuepin’s purposes. She had needed only one more year before she could leave the palace; they had even quietly settled on a wedding date. Now any prospect of meeting again was gone forever. Knowing she could not escape death, she was determined to ensure Yuepin did not survive either.

“The last time Your Majesty was intimate with Her Ladyship was on the ninth day of the eleventh month. By that count, Her Ladyship should be six months along. But Her Ladyship had already known she was with child on that very day — she had secretly taken medicine to protect the pregnancy before arranging for you to share her bed. In truth, Her Ladyship has been with child for more than seven months. Physician Yu need only check her pulse to know.”

A deathly silence fell over the great hall. Eyes — open and hidden — all turned to rest on Hao Yue. The account was so precise, so detailed — could it be that…

The Emperor suddenly let out a quiet laugh. “I recall that the physician who attended Yuepin’s regular check-ups was Imperial Physician Fang.”

Among the physicians of the Imperial Medical Bureau kneeling in a cluster led by the chief physician, the one named Fang went sheet-white. Sweat poured from his brow as he crawled forward on his knees and prostrated himself.

“Then let Imperial Physician Fang come forward and tell me how many months along Yuepin actually is.”

“This subject — this subject deserves ten thousand deaths!”

“What use do I have for your death? Just go and take Yuepin’s pulse. Is that not your duty?”

Imperial Physician Fang lost all composure and pitched forward to the ground. He scrambled hastily back onto his knees, but could not hold himself upright and collapsed again — a wretched sight.

The Emperor closed his eyes and lay back. Laifu, though racked with illness himself, was attendant at his side. Seeing this, he quickly stretched out both hands to cradle the Emperor’s head, terrified that he would be hurt.

The Emperor turned to look at him. At the sight of Laifu, skeletal with illness, the Emperor’s gaze stalled. He was right — it had been quite a few days since he had last seen this old man. “Are you planning to go on serving me down in the underworld?”

Laifu’s eyes went red at once. He had been hurt and had harbored resentment over the Emperor’s mistrust of him — but this was still the master he had served for a lifetime. A lifetime. From youth to now — how many decades had passed in the blink of an eye? Who could have imagined that the young prince who had once burned with ambition and aspirations would come to an end like this?

The Empress Dowager had been counting the time in her mind, but she could not help telling the confused Emperor: “Do you think Laifu truly fell ill? He was targeted, and poisoned. I have heard that Hao Yue disliked him and never permitted him to enter Ruyue Palace. If he had been at your side all along, would you ever have come to this? Emperor — you may distrust me. You may distrust Gu Yanxi. You may distrust anyone you please. But you should have trusted Laifu’s loyalty. What other path did he have but to be loyal to you? Besides you, who else does he have?”

And yet… had it been so?

The Emperor’s gaze drifted to an empty point in the air, his expression distant. “Hao Yue — is there anything you wish to say?”

“This subject’s devotion to Your Majesty is witnessed by Heaven and Earth!”

“And the Fourth?”

The Fourth Prince swallowed hard, his own voice forced into firmness: “Your son is utterly devoted to Father.”

The Emperor tilted his head back and let out a great laugh. His chest rose and fell; those golden needles seemed almost about to shake loose. One lifetime — and all it had taken to finally wake was this moment, and with it the realization of how pitifully foolish he had been.

That was his own blood and flesh. Without any argument, a single look was enough to tell what was true and what was false. The most laughable thing of all was that he himself had lost his mind, been deceived by such base and transparent tricks, and had driven away the nephew who had always dealt with him sincerely.

When he had learned his nephew was consuming elixir drugs, he had ensured that no more such charlatans could be found in the capital. If his nephew had known he had listened to slander and drank human blood and consumed the flesh carved from living hearts, he likely would have had Hao Yue killed even knowing it would cost him his head.

That nephew was his finest steed. At this moment, he was far away — a thousand miles from here — driving back enemies and guarding the people on his behalf.

“Physician Yu — I have troubled you.”

Physician Yu sighed inwardly, gave a small bow, and walked toward Yuepin, who was being held in place.

The Hao Yue who had been so unyielding suddenly began to struggle violently. “Your Majesty — why will you not believe me? You promised you would always believe me!”

“I believed you. When you said Hua Zhi was privately building a faction and cultivating such a network of connections for some treacherous purpose, I believed it. When you said she was acting out of resentment on behalf of the Hua Family and had schemed to make Gu Yanxi fall in love with her, I believed that too. When you said Gu Yanxi’s loyalty had therefore become suspect, I listened to you and laid trap after trap to test him. When you said Sixth Brother had by now grown his wings fully and harbored ambitions of revolt — that he had deliberately set up a situation to force a march on the palace — I then truly drove him to bring the court officials here in force.” The Emperor’s smile was bleak. “Hao Yue — was I not trusting enough in you?”

“Then trust me one more time — just one last time!”

“If you are truly as innocent as you claim, why would you fear a pulse check?” The Emperor waved his hand, and two more palace attendants stepped forward to hold Hao Yue in place.

Physician Yu shook his head slightly, with a helpless sorrow, and crouched down to take hold of Yuepin’s wrist. When this was all over, he would never set foot in the palace again for the rest of his life.

“Ah — it hurts, it hurts so much—” Hao Yue cried out and wrenched herself free from those holding her, curling over her own abdomen — and when everyone present assumed this was a performance, the hem of her lower garments was soaking through with red. It was real. She was truly bleeding.

“Your Majesty — my abdomen hurts so much…” Hao Yue raised her face, slick with sweat, and looked at him with total dependence and trust — the same helpless, girlish expression she had always worn in his presence.

But alas — this Emperor was no longer what he had been. He did not even glance at Hao Yue. He merely asked, “Physician Yu — have you made your assessment?”

“In this old physician’s view, it has already been more than seven months.”

“Chief Physician — go and examine her.”

The chief physician accepted the command and moved forward, forcibly pressing down on Yuepin’s wrist to take her pulse, before saying in a trembling voice, “This subject finds it to be as Physician Yu says.”

As though all the spirit had drained out of him at once, the Emperor’s bearing slumped. He listened to Hao Yue’s cries and said in a cold voice, “Seal her mouth.”

The affection built on deception was gone, and with it went any pity. Hao Yue was contorted with pain, tasting for the first time — firsthand — the emotionlessness of emperors. She thought: if only this child had slipped away sooner. If it had slipped away sooner, she would never have been caught in this impossible position.

But she had not been able to let it go. Even in her past life, right up until the very end, she had never managed to conceive. She had only been able to watch him favor one woman after another — watch him rejoice wildly at the birth of his eldest illegitimate son, watch him grow increasingly cold toward her for failing to produce a legitimate heir. This time, she had fallen pregnant with such surprising ease. Even knowing the timing was terrible, she had been overjoyed beyond measure. It was not so much that she loved him deeply — only that the resentment of her last life had finally, in this one, been repaid. That feeling of fulfillment was too overwhelming, and because of it she was all the less able to let go. She was afraid that if she lost this one, she would never have another.

“Mmh—” A spasm of sharp pain. Hao Yue instinctively bore down. A warmth spread below her, and then that pain which left one unable to live or to die finally began to ease.

An experienced older attendant leaned forward and lifted the hem of Hao Yue’s skirt to look — and then let out a sharp scream before stumbling backward two paces. Quickly catching herself — remembering where she was — she clapped a hand over her own mouth and moved her body to shield Hao Yue, turning to Yuxiang and shaking her head frantically.