Wen Yu’s eyes lifted slightly, but before she could respond, Tongque hurriedly walked in from outside the hall to report: “Princess, the Empress Dowager is ill. The people from Lingxi Palace have been kneeling outside the palace, saying the Empress Dowager wishes to see you.”

The conversation was thus cut short.

Only the people of Zhaohua Palace knew that A Li had been born several months ago.

But the Empress Dowager’s side knew Wen Yu was pregnant with a month added to her actual term.

Since A Li’s birth, the Empress Dowager had found several pretexts to send word, seemingly wanting to see the child.

This claim of illness was most likely for the same purpose.

Since the people from Lingxi Palace had been kneeling outside all along, it was clearly the Empress Dowager’s firm intention to see A Li. Wen Yu said: “Summon Imperial Physician Fang to enter the palace. He shall accompany me to Lingxi Palace.”

–

Wen Yu had not crossed the threshold of Lingxi Palace’s gate in nearly a year.

The palace servants below had already been cleared away. When she stepped into the Buddhist hall, she saw the Empress Dowager with her back to her, kneeling on a prayer cushion. Hearing footsteps, she turned to look at her, then rose with the support of an old nanny’s hand.

“You’ve come,” the Empress Dowager said as such, but her gaze passed over Wen Yu and Tongque following her, continuing to look outside, as if wanting to see whether she had brought A Li.

Wen Yu said calmly: “The child is at Zhaohua Palace.”

The Empress Dowager’s expression immediately became somewhat dim. Over this past year, Wen Yu had not shortened Lingxi Palace’s provisions in any way, but the Empress Dowager no longer needed to see outside ministers. Devoting herself to worshipping Buddha daily, she now seemed to have grown accustomed to plain clothing. The forcefulness and sharpness about her had gradually faded somewhat.

She asked: “Is it a boy or a girl?”

Wen Yu answered: “A daughter.”

The Empress Dowager seemed disappointed for an instant, then said: “You claim publicly that birth is imminent. When the time comes, still find a male infant…”

Wen Yu interrupted the Empress Dowager’s words, her eyes calm and distant: “Does the Empress Dowager summon this palace only to speak of such matters?”

The Empress Dowager’s lips moved several times before saying: “Do you know what will happen in the court if this child you bear is not the heir apparent?”

Wen Yu said: “The Liang territory war is nearly concluded. The war situation between Chen Kingdom and Xiling has only just begun. Over the past year, Chen Kingdom’s treasury circulation has mainly relied on trade between Liang and Chen territories. If this palace fails to give birth to an heir apparent, would the court ministers demand this palace return governance to Liang?”

The Empress Dowager was blocked from speaking.

After Xiling began encroaching on South Chen, South Chen was the one that truly needed to rely on an alliance with Great Liang to keep breathing.

Seeing Wen Yu turn to leave, the Empress Dowager called out to stop her again: “Wait!”

The old nanny supporting her brought over a brocade box from the table. She opened it and handed it to Wen Yu: “This is a small gift I prepared for the child.”

The gold lock was not small – one could tell at a glance it was substantial in weight.

Wen Yu didn’t accept it, only saying: “That child has no relationship whatsoever with the Jiang family.”

The Empress Dowager’s face showed disappointment: “This dowager knows. This dowager is that child’s grandmother and should also give this gift…”

Wen Yu knew the Empress Dowager had misunderstood the meaning of her words. Her brow furrowed slightly, but it was also inappropriate to say more.

She said: “I left no consideration whatsoever for the Jiang family. The Empress Dowager need not redirect your guilt toward the Cavalry General onto that child.”

Mentioning Jiang Yu again, pain still showed on the Empress Dowager’s face.

That was a child she had watched grow up like her own son.

As Wen Yu quickly walked out of the Buddhist hall, she said: “This dowager knows you protected the Jiang family’s female relatives. Those beyond the third degree of mourning were also spared from confiscation and exile.”

After the initial resentment, through a year’s time, Empress Dowager Jiang could finally look at the Jiang family’s downfall back then with true impartiality.

Or rather, even earlier, she had known that with the Jiang family rising to such heights, sooner or later there would come a day of decline after reaching the peak.

If the original plan had gone smoothly, having Jiang Yu and Wen Yu produce a royal heir, then after that child secured the throne in the future, he would inevitably also purge the Jiang family.

The Jiang family falling at Wen Yu’s hands – the process was merely twenty years faster than she had anticipated.

The gray at her temples was so distinct, exhaustion showing in her eyes: “This dowager was previously unwilling to accept it – unwilling to accept that together with the Prime Minister, how we could lose to you.”

“But you truly… have governed Chen Kingdom extremely well.”

Wen Yu paused slightly but didn’t turn back, continuing to walk outside with Tongque’s supporting hand.

Only after they could no longer see Wen Yu’s figure did the old nanny beside the Empress Dowager help her sit down by the couch. After glancing outside, she said: “Your Majesty, what about Third Miss’s child?”

After the Jiang family was confiscated back then, the clan’s female relatives were supposed to be sent to the Music Bureau. It was Wen Yu, mindful that Jiang Yu had merit in rescuing the sovereign, who had the Jiang family’s female relatives enter the palace and assigned them duties among the Six Bureaus and Twenty-Four Offices.

Most of the Jiang family’s female relatives had superior looks. The third miss from the household, through various encounters, ended up in a relationship with Vice Commander Yan Zhen of the Feathered Forest Guard.

Yan Zhen used his authority to transfer her to the Cold Palace, ostensibly to attend to the late king’s consorts there, but actually allowing Third Miss Jiang to peacefully carry her pregnancy in the Cold Palace.

Now the child had been born. However, Yan Zhen’s family had long since married him to a wife. Even for taking a concubine, taking a Jiang family woman with crimes on her record – the Yan family would certainly not permit it.

It was Second Miss Jiang who, under the pretext of visiting the Empress Dowager, brought the plea before her. Only then did the Empress Dowager learn of her younger sister’s affair with Yan Zhen. At the time, she had flown into quite a rage.

This meeting with Wen Yu served two purposes: first, she indeed wanted to see her child with Jiang Yu; second, she attempted to persuade Wen Yu that if she gave birth to a daughter, to have Wen Yu adopt the child under her own care, publicly claiming she bore twins – after all, they were both children of the Jiang family.

Before the royal heir’s first birthday, the court ministers couldn’t see the child anyway. Raising the child deep in the palace, once the years passed, who could still discern the difference in months?

But now with the situation changed to this extent, Wen Yu’s position had grown increasingly firm. Seeing Wen Yu’s attitude so resolute, she ultimately didn’t speak the words asking Wen Yu to adopt her niece’s child.

—Currently, outside all of Lingxi Palace, there were still Wen Yu’s people standing guard. Empress Dowager Jiang had long had no one available to her in the palace.

Using this connection between her niece and Feathered Forest Guard Vice Commander Yan Zhen, she could still secretly have Yan Zhen do things for her in confidence.

The Empress Dowager closed her eyes and said: “We’ll discuss it after Third Girl completes her month of postpartum confinement. Even if my Jiang family has declined, this dowager still stands in this palace. If that Yan Zhen dares harm someone from my Jiang family, even if that old thing from the Yan family breaks his son’s leg, the Yan family must still give an account to my Jiang family’s daughter.”

–

After leaving Lingxi Palace, Wen Yu instructed Tongque: “Have those below watch Lingxi Palace more closely during this period.”

Tongque didn’t understand: “Is there some problem on the Empress Dowager’s side?”

Wen Yu walked forward calmly with her supporting hand, saying: “My intuition finds something strange.”

Tongque acknowledged. As she continued forward supporting Wen Yu, she noticed a pear tree outside the palace wall blooming like snow – everything just like last year’s scene.

She couldn’t help but say: “Princess, this year’s spring has come again.”

Wen Yu also raised her head to look at that pear tree, silently reciting in her heart: Yes, this year’s spring has come again.

–

The news that Wen Yu had given birth to a royal daughter reached Liang territory on the night before another strong assault on Luodu.

At that time, Xiao Li was still discussing the next day’s siege deployment with Fan Yuan and others. Upon suddenly hearing the “joyous news from Chen territory” delivered to the Liang camp, though he only became somewhat more silent and taciturn afterward, his complexion remained normal as he finished explaining all deployments.

After the generals departed and personal guards went to clear the long table, they discovered that on the main seat where Xiao Li had sat earlier, one armrest of that iron-wrapped chair had already been gripped into a concave, deformed shape.

On the second day’s siege, Xiao Li’s eyes showed a blood-shot color as if he hadn’t slept all night. The baleful aura surrounding him was intensely alarming – even his own personal guards didn’t dare approach easily.

During this month that Luodu had been besieged, the Pei camp’s morale had declined again. Moreover, because they still had to respond to occasional surprise attacks from the several allied armies outside the city, that taut string had been stretched too long. The exhaustion and anxiety rebounding from it made the Pei camp’s morale increasingly unstable.

Resources within the city were limited. To be safe, each siege attempt by the several allied armies required the Pei army inside the city to respond as if it were a defensive battle concerning Luodu’s survival. But they frequently encountered the Liang army feigning sieges to toy with them, just to make them consume the city’s arrows and fire oil.

The Pei camp commanders responsible for rotation duty defending the city needed to muster one hundred twenty percent of their attention to judge whether the enemy army outside was truly attacking. As the city’s military supplies continuously decreased, the fear that Luodu would eventually fall constantly hung over all Pei soldiers’ hearts.

Thus each time the alarm drums of siege sounded, the Pei army’s mentality inside the city had evolved from the initial desperate battle to fear to numbness, and now to wishing the giant sword suspended overhead would just drop sooner and end it all.

With geographical disadvantages and isolated without support, with military morale collapsed to this extent, even with Qin Yi in command, it already showed a situation beyond salvation.

The timing chosen by the three allied armies for this full-force assault a month later was just right.

Although Qin Yi exhausted everything he had learned in his lifetime, the Pei army inside the city was ultimately like a wooden wall already rotted and about to collapse.

Xiao Li was taught by him, but through thousands of battles killing barbarians in the northern lands, his tactics were not only crafty but also thoroughly brutal.

Just like that day when Pei Song supervised the battle at the north city – though the Pei army on the walls already did everything possible to defend the city, the military formations below were like ocean tides carrying unstoppable giant waves surging to engulf them.

The rotted wooden wall collapsed with a thunderous crash amid these towering waves.

When the city gate was smashed open by the battering ram, Pei Song listened to the deafening sounds of killing below, gazing languidly and somewhat absently at the sun overhead from the city tower.

He still felt unwilling, yet also felt some empty bewilderment emerge, as if he himself didn’t understand what he was unwilling about.

Was it unwillingness at not completely destroying the former Liang, crushing the imperial power that had once pressed down to destroy his entire fate, and sitting on that dragon throne?

Or was it unwillingness at not using conquest of the entire world to prove himself right?

The four great families that wrongly framed his Qin family back in the day deserved death. Wen Shi’an deserved death! Those common people under heaven who had been desperately protected by his father, yet after his father was wrongly imprisoned, turned around to curse his Qin family – they were all a group of ants who deserved endless suffering, toward whom he should have no shred of mercy, only fit to be used as chess pieces and manipulated at will!

Yet he had lost precisely to such an ant who crawled out from the marketplace.

He thought it was because the opponent was taught by Qin Yi, but Qin Yi had also been defeated.

The stifled anger gathered in his heart, surging that unwillingness ever higher, making Pei Song taste an emotion called humiliation, such that even his eyes floated with blood-tinged hatred.

Already soldiers who had broken into the city were trying to charge up to the city tower.

Advisors and trusted generals on both sides all urged Pei Song to leave quickly. They would dispatch an elite cavalry unit to escort Pei Song out of the city.

Pei Song suppressed his hatred, closed his eyes briefly, slowly nodded, and said: “Bring the old madman along as well.”

Lackeys stepped forward to support Qin Yi, but were nearly cleaved by his blade and had to avoid him.

Qin Yi drew his blade and turned back to glare furiously at those around him. He yanked off the battle helmet on his head and threw it out as well, leaving only a head of sparse disheveled hair exploding like a lion’s mane in the cold wind. His turbid eyes were full of stern fighting spirit: “His Majesty is still in the palace. How dare you become deserters and surrendering generals to disturb our army’s morale? According to military law, immediate execution on the spot!”

Everyone knew he was mad and deranged. At present, no one tried to reason with him.

Time was pressing. Pei Yuan even wanted to directly knock him unconscious and take him away by force.

Unexpectedly, though Qin Yi’s consciousness was unclear, his movements were exceptionally agile. The hand chop Pei Yuan aimed at his back of the neck hadn’t yet touched his neck when he nearly had an arm sliced off by the blade Qin Yi swung back. His heart greatly alarmed, he hastily retreated a step.

“The deputy general takes command from this general! Hold the city tower to the death! Warriors from the four great camps east and west follow this general out of the city to kill the enemy!” Qin Yi shouted loudly. His entire person had already leaped down from the inner crenellations of the city tower, landing steadily on the platform of the stone steps above and below the city tower. Catching sight of deserters, he sent out another blade strike. Amid the blood-red color, he looked around and shouted sternly: “Any more deserters will meet this fate!”

Indeed, some fleeing Pei soldiers were momentarily shocked by him into stopping.

Qin Yi continued toward the barbican gate, seizing a horse lance from a Pei general’s hand. He mounted a horse, all the way skewering allied soldiers while shouting loudly as he killed his way out of the city.

Pei Song, braced against the inner city wall crenellations watching this scene, his complexion extremely ugly, hurriedly ordered Pei Yuan and other lackeys: “Quickly go bring him back!”

Pei Yuan hastily led people to chase Qin Yi. But after the city gate was breached, inside the barbican gate was a chaotic melee. Outside, soldiers from various battalions were practically stacking into a human wall surging inward, blocking the entire city gate corridor completely tight.

Pei Yuan and others could only, covered in fresh blood, push against the human wall inch by inch, killing their way outward.

After Qin Yi rode his horse out of the city, he skewered anyone he saw. Though his body appeared gaunt and thin, his strength was enormous. When a general from the allied army tried to capture him, the moment their long weapons met, he was shocked backward along with his horse. Fortunately, a long halberd timely extended from the side to block at his waist, preventing that young general from falling from his horse.

After clearly seeing who it was, grateful and still frightened, he called out: “Marquis!”

Xiao Li’s eyes, showing blood-shot color from a sleepless night, were somber. He only said: “This person – leave him to me.”

That young general had already witnessed this old man’s prowess. Of course he didn’t dare act presumptuous before Xiao Li again. He quickly rode his horse away to battle a nearby Pei general.

Qin Yi, upon seeing Xiao Li, raised his horse lance pointing directly at him: “Huyan brat, come quickly to your death!”

Xiao Li furrowed his brow, realizing something was wrong. He asked: “What are you calling me?”