Prince Dongping was shocked and uncertain, almost suspecting Han Zhengqing was a madman. What exactly was Han Zhengqing after?! He didn’t understand Han Zhengqing’s intentions and suspected even more that Han Zhengqing wanted him to die faster—who didn’t know that Zhou Weizhao was the beloved treasure of Emperor Jianzhang and Empress Lu? Was he supposed to brazenly go out and say Zhou Weizhao gave his father poisoned ginseng?! Moreover, the Crown Prince was about to wake up! Was he supposed to call a deer a horse and frame someone right in front of the Crown Prince?!
Nanny Qi’s sweat flowed even faster. Though the heat of summer had clearly passed and it was now early autumn, she was still drenched in sweat, nearly fainting from being suffocated by her own perspiration. After stammering for a while, she vaguely uttered the final sentence: “Your Highness, it’s not that you don’t know—today His Highness the Crown Prince originally intended for His Highness the Grand Prince to die. Since His Highness the Grand Prince is fine, for his own sake, His Highness the Crown Prince must strike back falsely, mustn’t he? If you go out now and say his poisoning was His Highness the Grand Prince’s doing, he’ll even be grateful to you.”
As Nanny Qi spoke, her courage seemed to grow somewhat. She continued following Han Zhengqing’s messenger’s original words, repeating them verbatim for Zhou Weiqi to hear: “Moreover, afterward he’ll only have you as a son. At that time, can’t you just push this matter onto the Marquis? You told His Highness the Crown Prince before that you obtained this ginseng from him, didn’t you?”
Zhou Weiqi had even less idea what Han Zhengqing wanted to do. Unable to discern Han Zhengqing’s intentions and objectives, he naturally didn’t dare trust his words lightly. At a complete loss, he had someone summon Qian Ying and Huang Yiqing.
Qian Ying and Huang Yiqing were much calmer than him. After hearing Nanny Qi’s words, the two exchanged glances and fell into contemplation. After a long while, they turned away to consult, and after consulting, Qian Ying was first to speak: “This is meant to make His Highness the Crown Prince and His Highness the Grand Prince kill each other… When that time comes, His Highness the Grand Prince certainly won’t escape unscathed, but what about His Highness the Crown Prince? If His Highness the Grand Prince is innocently wronged, the Crown Princess and the Grand Prince definitely won’t swallow this grievance. At that time, they’ll surely reveal what the Crown Prince did today…”
The blow to the Eastern Palace was imaginable. Han Zhengqing actually just didn’t want the Eastern Palace to prosper—he simply hated the Crown Prince.
Zhou Weiqi listened somewhat excitedly, his eyes brightening as he looked at Huang Yiqing and Qian Ying: “Then we should listen to him this once?”
Huang Yiqing looked at him incredulously and immediately spoke to stop him: “No! Your Highness absolutely must not do this!” He stood up straight in agitation: “You and the Eastern Palace share both glory and loss. When the skin is gone, how can the hair attach? If word spreads that the Crown Prince murdered his legitimate son, it would be a catastrophic disaster for the Eastern Palace—murdering one’s own child is unprecedented in history, enough to shake the foundation of the state, and would cause the Crown Prince to be condemned by everyone from then on… At that time, deposing the Crown Prince would be extremely likely! At that time, how would you, as the Crown Prince’s second son and a prince who has always been favored by the Crown Prince, conduct yourself?! Your situation wouldn’t be better than now—in fact, it would be worse, because everyone in the world would think you bewitched His Highness the Crown Prince and instigated him to commit such an unconscionable act against human ethics!”
Zhou Weiqi couldn’t help but feel his hair stand on end, his entire body breaking out in goosebumps—Han Zhengqing was deceiving him. With this move, Han Zhengqing would make the Crown Prince lose both his wife and his soldiers. Even if Zhou Weizhao didn’t die, he’d lose a layer of skin. The Eastern Palace’s father and son would become enemies, framing each other. If this spread, the entire imperial family would become a laughingstock. Emperor Jianzhang wouldn’t allow this matter to spread either. The most likely course of action would be to find an excuse to depose the Crown Prince. At that time, both the Crown Prince and the Grand Prince would suffer disaster, and he, this fish that slipped through the net, wouldn’t truly be one—he had never been favored by Emperor Jianzhang and Empress Lu. At that time, they would certainly vent their anger on him.
This was precisely Han Zhengqing’s plan—he wanted the entire Eastern Palace to suffer disaster! What exactly did he want to do?!
Han Zhengqing actually didn’t really want to do anything. His gaze was cold as he stared at the person before him like a wolf, slowly curling his lips into a cold laugh: “It will succeed. Don’t worry so much.”
He spoke, and then the smile at the corners of his mouth deepened. But this smile didn’t make one feel like spring breeze; on the contrary, it made one feel as if falling into an ice cellar, the entire person extremely cold. Prince Gong’s messenger, Zou Yanzheng, made a faint sound of acknowledgment and didn’t dare say much more.
Han Zhengqing raised his eyebrows and asked in an indiscernible mood: “What, you don’t believe it?”
Zou Yanzheng couldn’t say he didn’t believe it. He just felt that the Crown Prince wasn’t stupid either and might not be willing to frame Zhou Weizhao—if a son wanted to poison his father to death, there would have to be some justification, right? Wouldn’t the Crown Prince’s face be equally disgraced at that time?
As if seeing through his doubts clearly, Han Zhengqing’s lips curved into a mocking smile: “No one understands him better than I do. He will do this—he detests his son. Not only does he detest his son, he also wants to kill him. He has a guilty conscience. Upon learning his son didn’t die and that his instigation of Prince Gong wasn’t effective, he needs to tightly cover up that assassination. How to cover it up? Wouldn’t being poisoned himself be the best way to shut people’s mouths?”
Zou Yanzheng shuddered. He felt the person before him wasn’t normal—the methods he conceived simply weren’t things a normal person could think of. Even though he’d followed Prince Gong for so long and done quite a few major things, he was still so shocked by Han Zhengqing’s excessively vicious linked stratagems that he had nightmares for several days.
He pressed his lips together and looked somewhat hesitantly at his own knees, not daring to raise his eyes: “Not everything can be under control… What if the wolf pack really bites His Highness the Grand Prince and them all to death?”
Han Zhengqing raised his eyebrows in surprise, as if he were asking about a joke: “Wouldn’t that be even more convenient? If that pack of wolves directly bites everyone to death, then the Crown Prince will die. Why would he die? Of course, because he was deliberately poisoned to death by Prince Dongping! And how would the Grand Prince have died? Of course, also killed in an ambush premeditated by Prince Dongping!”
Zou Yanzheng had nothing to say. He uncomfortably changed his sitting position, constantly waiting for news to be sent from outside, quite unable to sit still. He was very afraid of Song Chuyi—he had once been Prince Duan’s man, doing things for Prince Duan, frequently associating with people from Huangjue Temple. He deeply knew that this young lady Song Chuyi was somewhat sinister.
To say Han Zhengqing’s plan wasn’t thorough would be wrong—he’d simply calculated everyone into it. Combining their respective personality traits and hidden ailments, he’d schemed against each and every one of them, and had even calculated every possibility. But Zou Yanzheng didn’t know why he just felt somewhat uneasy. Looking at Han Zhengqing, who was full of triumph with his eyes even shining, he shifted his feet and sighed uneasily.