Emperor Qiwen wasn’t quite sure what he was feeling at the moment. He had originally thought that, with Nanmen Rong having been deposed and now suffering such a serious injury, since he had already returned, he might as well pay her a visit — if only as a small gesture of comfort.

Of course, he had also deliberately timed his visit for when Nanmen Ye had returned to his own residence — had Nanmen Ye been present, he would never have come at all.

He never expected that, before he had even entered Xuanhua Hall, he would witness Nanmen Rong once again brutalizing an innocent young woman!

No matter how many lessons that venomous woman was taught, it seemed her nature would never change.

The chief eunuch also felt a pang of pity — such a fine, young, beautiful girl, reduced to this.

He sighed helplessly: “Your Majesty, this girl looks like… she may not make it.”

The chief eunuch had seen the Eighth Miss Feng before — he had heard she had even been crowned the capital’s foremost talented beauty the previous year.

How cruel-hearted the Empress truly was, to bring herself to such savagery against a girl as lovely as a flower!

As Emperor Qiwen looked upon the dying Feng Qingyin, his loathing for Nanmen Rong reached unprecedented heights.

Deposing the Empress had never truly been what he wanted, and he knew it would only make his future path more difficult than ever.

Yet in this moment, he suddenly felt overwhelming relief that he had finally deposed that venomous woman!

That an Empress of the realm could be this vile was simply terrifying!

“Your Majesty…” The chief eunuch glanced at Feng Qingyin, whose breathing grew ever fainter, then looked at Emperor Qiwen with a hesitant expression. “Then… shall we still go see Consort Rong?”

“No!” Emperor Qiwen, seething with fury, swept his sleeve in dismissal: “We’re going back!”

…

The Seventh Princess turned out to be the Seventh Prince!

The moment this news spread, the entire court and realm were thrown into upheaval!

No one knew why the Seventh Prince had disguised himself as the Seventh Princess from the very beginning. Some might have guessed, but no one dared speak the truth of it aloud.

This time, it was the Ninth Prince himself who personally escorted the Seventh Prince to court, and it was the Emperor himself who drafted the decree restoring the Seventh Prince’s rightful title and status.

In short, from now on, the imperial household of the Zhan dynasty no longer had only the Crown Prince as its one capable heir.

The Seventh Prince had studied under the Defender-General of the Realm and was now also a rising star at the Imperial Academy — his future prospects were limitless.

As the prince had not yet married or established any merits of his own, the time for him to be granted a princely title had not yet come, and so for now he continued to reside within the palace.

In recent days, a steady stream of people had sought to offer condolences to the Seventh Prince over the passing of Consort Jing, but word had it that the prince spent most of his time at the Academy, rarely venturing out — making him exceedingly difficult to actually meet.

In truth, a portion of the court had long disapproved of the Nanmen clan’s conduct, yet had been powerless to overturn their influence.

What made it most disheartening was that, among all the Emperor’s sons, only the Crown Prince could truly be counted as talented — as for the rest of the princes… it was better not to even mention them.

Before, it had seemed as though all hope was thoroughly lost — yet who could have known that now there would suddenly be a renowned Seventh Prince as well? Among those not aligned with the Nanmen faction, who wouldn’t want to curry favor with him?

Once Emperor Qiwen learned he had another capable son, his delight knew no bounds. It was said that, in order to cultivate the Seventh Prince, he even withdrew fifty thousand troops from the Imperial Guard and placed them under the prince’s command.

“With your father stirring things up like this, you’re going to have a lot more on your hands from now on.”

That morning over breakfast, Feng Jiu’er nibbled on a piece of osmanthus cake, saying offhandedly, “He wants there to be a balance of power between you and the Crown Prince. But from now on, I doubt your days are going to be very comfortable.”

“I have no interest in any of this.” Zhan Luori simply continued sipping his tea, unbothered.

Whether or not he had fifty thousand Imperial Guards meant nothing to him at all — especially since these fifty thousand troops had been forcibly reassigned to him by his father while the Crown Prince lay gravely wounded in bed.

Setting aside whether this was even a righteous thing to do, it was hard to say whether these fifty thousand troops — now renamed the Dragon-Guarding Army — would even be loyal to him.

These were guards the Crown Prince himself had personally trained, and now he had stumbled into this windfall, turned into the Dragon-Guarding Army. It was a hot potato Zhan Luori had absolutely no desire to hold.

“Whether you want it or not, you’ll have to take it. If you refuse, your father is liable to do even more.”

Emperor Qiwen had made up his mind this time to counterbalance the power of the Nanmen clan. Yet he hadn’t stopped to consider — by wounding the Crown Prince’s heart this way, wasn’t he risking the Crown Prince turning against him, siding with the Nanmen clan to scheme against his own throne instead?

But such thoughts were best kept silent — voicing them aloud could invite mortal danger in an instant.

“For now, I still can’t quite grasp your father’s true intentions.” She always sensed that, however weak-willed the Emperor might seem, he wasn’t truly this foolish a man.

What exactly lay behind such a move, Feng Jiu’er still couldn’t quite understand.

Wiping her mouth with a towel, she stood up: “Whatever your father’s intentions are, just hold your position for now and don’t act. Anyway, I’m taking a break today — I need to go out for a while.”

“Are you going back to the Feng family?” Zhan Luori set down his chopsticks as well, wiping his mouth.

“I’ll go out first, then head back to the Feng family.”

“I’ll come with you—”

“What?” Feng Jiu’er thought she must have misheard. “Please. You’re the Seventh Prince now, not the Seventh Princess. A grown man like you coming home with me — are you trying to marry into the Feng family as a live-in husband or something?”

Zhan Luori’s handsome face flushed slightly, and he said with displeasure, “I have no idea what nonsense you’re going on about all day. It’s just that Ninth Imperial Uncle told me to keep an eye on you, so you don’t go causing trouble.”

“No way. I have something important to do today. I’ll find you later — bye-bye, birdy!”

Normally she let him tag along whenever she went out, but today was absolutely out of the question, because today she truly had something important to attend to.

Feng Jiu’er packed a bit of dried provisions and firmly refused to let Zhan Luori come along, only borrowing a horse from him. Once she had passed through the gates of the Imperial Academy, she immediately spurred the horse and galloped out toward the city’s outskirts.

She hadn’t been up to the snowy mountains in a long while. So much had happened recently, and only now that Zhan Luori’s spirits had improved somewhat over the past couple of days did she finally have the chance to get away.

After all, ever since this fellow had learned to “listen to her,” he had genuinely taken to listening to her in everything from then on — to the point that, without her around, he genuinely didn’t know how to get through his days.

Xiao Yingtao had explained it as emotional transference — meaning that before, with Consort Jing present, he’d had someone to rely on emotionally; now that Consort Jing was gone, that dependency needed someone new to inherit it.

And now, Feng Jiu’er had become his “mother” of the heart, the natural inheritor of that familial bond.

Unless he truly managed to step out from beneath the shadow of his mother’s death on his own, there was no telling how long this kind of dependency might continue.

Jiu’er hadn’t been used to it at first, but eventually she simply let it be. As long as he listened to her, at least his days passed smoothly enough, much like an ordinary person’s.

Far better than him sinking into despair, hiding away alone in gloomy misery.

Still, playing the role of his “mother” was no ordinary burden. On days with training, he would go and take part in it; on days without, it fell to her to arrange things for him.

Otherwise, this fellow would simply remain in his room at a loss, unwilling even to see anyone.

Being a mother, it turned out, was truly no easy thing. Sigh…