A single lamp burned in the room, providing light for nighttime needs.
In the dimly lit gauze canopy, the Crown Princess met those suddenly opened eyes, her heartbeat momentarily pausing.
“You’re not asleep?” the Crown Prince spoke, his voice muffled within the canopy, sounding more casually familiar than the gentleness of the past two days.
This familiarity caused the Crown Princess’s halted heartbeat to suddenly resume, pounding rapidly for several beats.
In that instant, she felt as if the familiar Crown Prince had returned.
The Crown Princess opened her mouth, her voice slightly dry: “I suddenly woke up… Why is Your Highness awake as well?”
“Oh, I’ve been having occasional headaches these past two days, so I haven’t been sleeping soundly,” the Crown Prince’s eyes appeared somewhat deep in the dim canopy.
The Crown Princess suddenly felt stifled, as if a stone was lodged in her chest, making it hard to breathe.
She simply sat up and lifted the gauze canopy.
It was already mid-autumn, and the nights had grown cool.
The Crown Prince looked at the Crown Princess’s actions with confusion and asked, “Why did you lift the canopy?”
“Is Your Highness not used to it?” The Crown Princess gave the Crown Prince a deep look, her expression somewhat blurred in the darkness. “In the past, Your Highness preferred it this way.”
“Is that so?” Hearing the Crown Princess say this, the Crown Prince fell silent.
The Crown Princess lay back down, turning to look at the man beside her: “Does Your Highness feel better?”
“A bit stronger. Let’s sleep,” the Crown Prince said.
The Crown Princess nodded: “Mm, let’s sleep.”
She turned away, facing outward and saying no more.
The room returned to silence.
However, the Crown Princess’s mind was far from calm. A thought quietly arose in her heart: Had the Crown Prince truly lost his memory?
The Crown Prince had angered His Majesty, who had struck him on the head with a white jade paperweight. Upon waking, he couldn’t remember past events.
She hadn’t thought much of it initially.
Head injuries causing such effects weren’t unheard of.
But they had been married for over a decade. Even if the Crown Prince was usually cold towards her, she understood certain nuances.
Like just now, the Crown Prince’s casual question.
If the Crown Prince had completely lost his memory, he should have been entirely unfamiliar with her. Yet that question came in his habitual tone…
Something wasn’t right.
Could the Crown Prince be faking his memory loss?
The Crown Princess instinctively didn’t want to think this way.
For her, a Crown Prince without memories meant not just a fresh start for him, but for her as well.
How she wished he could be an ordinary man, even if mediocre. At least then she wouldn’t lie awake at night worrying about Chun’er’s future.
But if he was pretending to lose his memory, all of this was undoubtedly a vain hope.
A leopard can’t change its spots. Even if the Crown Prince had, in a rare moment of cleverness, thought to use memory loss to escape His Majesty’s punishment, he was still that same mess.
The Crown Princess wanted to turn around but ultimately didn’t move.
She didn’t want to test him anymore.
If the Crown Prince had truly lost his memory, that would be a cause for joy. If he was pretending, not exposing him would at least allow the charade to continue longer.
The Crown Princess closed her eyes, sighing deeply in her heart, tears unknowingly forming in the corners of her eyes.
The Crown Prince, lying on the inner side of the bed, heard the even breathing of the person beside him and relaxed his tense nerves.
That was close; he had almost been exposed by this woman!
Even now, the Crown Prince felt as if he were dreaming.
How had he come up with such a brilliant idea of feigning memory loss?
The Crown Prince marveled countless times at his quick thinking upon waking.
After being knocked unconscious by His Majesty, he had awakened after an unknown period but couldn’t open his eyes.
He had heard His Majesty questioning the Imperial Physician and those angry words, and his heart was filled with fear.
He had caused such a scandal outside the palace; would His Majesty depose him again?
No, no, he absolutely couldn’t be deposed a second time.
He wasn’t stupid. A Crown Prince deposed twice would have no chance of recovery.
What could he do?
Unable to open his eyes, he kept pondering this question, then overheard two Imperial Physicians whispering.
One physician said softly, “The Crown Prince’s head injury is troublesome. The human head is so complex. Even without visible bleeding, problems can arise. Some people even forget why they were injured when they first woke up…”
The other physician whispered, “Now is not the time to think about these things. The urgent matter is to have the Crown Prince regain consciousness as soon as possible.”
The Crown Prince focused all his attention on the words of the first physician.
Forgetting why he was injured?
What if he not only forgot why he was injured but also couldn’t remember what he had done before?
No, what if he forgot everything?
Although His Majesty was stricter with him and not as loving as with his other brothers, if he couldn’t remember anything, surely His Majesty wouldn’t punish him severely.
The more the Crown Prince thought about it, the more brilliant the idea seemed. When he opened his eyes, he would become a bewildered and innocent amnesiac.
It wasn’t difficult to pretend. He just needed to say and do less and act more honestly.
Unexpectedly, when he woke from a nightmare at night and found the Crown Princess staring at him intently, he panicked and almost exposed himself.
The Crown Prince quietly placed a hand over his heart.
It had truly scared him into a cold sweat.
No, he must spend less time with this woman in the future.
Not only was she uninteresting, but she was also shrewd. If she discovered his pretense, she might tell His Majesty.
At this moment, the Crown Prince felt extreme disgust towards the Crown Princess.
Sleeping in the same bed, the Crown Prince thought viciously: Once he ascended the throne and no one could restrain him, his first act would be to divorce this woman and marry a gentle and virtuous woman as his empress.
Thinking of this, the Crown Prince pondered over the events at the Imperial Treasure Pavilion.
How had such a sure thing slipped away?
Curse it all, he had felt a pain in his neck, and when he woke up, everything was in chaos. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
But one thing was certain: someone had plotted against him!
Rescuing that woman and causing his downfall—could it have been Seventh Brother’s doing?
But that didn’t make sense; Seventh Brother didn’t know he had his eye on that woman.
Never mind, better to wrongly kill a thousand than let one guilty person escape. Seventh Brother had already taken Er’niu and that exceptionally beautiful woman; he deserved to die anyway. He would settle accounts after ascending the throne.
Unable to figure out who had harmed him, the Crown Prince decided not to dwell on it. Once he ascended the throne peacefully, he could find excuses to eliminate all those who had angered him.
For now, his task was to avoid exposing any flaws and continue pretending to have lost his memory.
Fortunately, after pretending for two days, he had gained some experience. It wasn’t too difficult.
The Crown Prince relaxed and closed his eyes to sleep.
On the sixteenth day of the eighth month, several princes came to the palace to visit the Crown Prince.
The Crown Prince was determined to maintain his disguise. To avoid arousing suspicion, he met briefly with the visiting princes.
Soon after, an attendant entered and announced, “Your Highness, Prince Yan, and General Xiaotian have come to see you.”
The Crown Prince was momentarily confused: “Who?”
The attendant also found it somewhat absurd and said dryly, “Prince Yan and General Xiaotian—”
Prince Yan was truly being ridiculous. It was proper to visit the Crown Prince, but why bring a dog along?
Even if it was a fourth-rank dog official, it was still a dog!