Chapter 13: Wow! This Is Also a Famous Figure in History

When she reached the estate gate, the guards crossed their greatswords before her, forcing her to stop.

She handed over the divorce letter in her hand and asked them to invite her father to come.

The deputy captain of the imperial guards came over, took the letter, and skimmed it in a few swift lines.

He lifted his head and gave a meaningful look at this second madam who was abandoning ship in a time of crisis.

“The Zhu family has written a divorce letter. And where is your severance letter? If you willingly cut all ties with the Zhu family, then write me another letter severing your affections.”

Song Anqiao’s pupils tightened, and her fingers suddenly clenched!

They wanted that as well?

If the Zhu family made it through this disaster intact, what would she do after writing a severance letter?

The deputy captain glanced at her and said coolly, “If you won’t write it, I’ll take it that you’re unwilling to leave the Zhu family. Go back.”

Song Anqiao’s heart leapt into her throat!

How could she possibly not want to leave!

She drew a deep breath. “I’ll write it now.”

She’d heard that the Empress in the palace had already been deposed by the Emperor. What hope could the Zhu family still have?

There was absolutely no way they would survive this calamity!

She closed her eyes briefly, then turned and told a servant to fetch brush and ink.

Right there at the estate gate, she set her brush to paper and wrote a severance letter, declaring that from this day on she was cutting all ties with the Zhu family and bore them no sentiments whatsoever.

The deputy captain accepted the letter and gave a cold laugh. “Second Madam is certainly decisive!”

After a sneer, he finally raised his hand for someone to invite Minister Song.

Clenching her fists, Song Anqiao endured the scornful looks the guards cast at her and forced herself to stand straight.

She was doing this to stay alive. If she could live, why rush to her death?

What she had done was not shameful!
… The Song residence.

Ever since the Minister of War, Song Baozhang, learned that his in-laws had supposedly defected and betrayed the realm, he had been on pins and needles, afraid his own family would be implicated.

Now, upon hearing that the imperial guards had come to say his daughter had already been divorced by the Zhu family and that he should take her home, he was instantly relieved!

Wonderful!

Once he brought his daughter back, the Song family would have no further ties with the Zhu family!

He immediately ordered a carriage prepared and went to the Zhu residence.

…

Thus, when Zhu Wuhuan hurried from the palace to the Grand General’s Estate, she saw the Minister of War’s carriage stopped at the gate.

She sat upright in the plain, unadorned carriage, quietly watching the touching scene of father and daughter at the entrance.

“Qiao’er, Father has come to take you home!”

Minister Song jumped down from the carriage, striding up the steps, his face full of emotion.

Song Anqiao, who had been waiting at the gate for quite some time, quickly moved to meet him, eyes red. “Father!”

Minister Song grasped his daughter’s arm, speaking with heartache. “Frightened, are you? Don’t be afraid. Father will take you home now!”

Tears streamed down Song Anqiao’s face. “All right!”

The deputy captain of the imperial guards standing to the side regarded the pair blandly.

“Lord Song, it won’t do to just take your daughter away like this.”

Arms folded, he eyed the minister. “Although the Zhu family has issued a divorce letter, and your daughter is willing to sever ties with them, whether she can leave still depends on you petitioning His Majesty.”

Father and daughter looked at him together.

Song Anqiao frowned. “Sir, earlier when I presented the Zhu family’s divorce letter, you said I had to write a severance letter with my own hand. I wrote it. Now my father is here, and you say that won’t do—that we still need to request instructions from His Majesty. Are you toying with us on purpose?”

The deputy captain snorted. “What, according to the Second Madam of the Zhu family—no, pardon me, you are now Miss Song—”

He looked at Song Anqiao with open mockery. “According to you, now that your all-powerful father has arrived, we don’t need to involve the Emperor in this matter? Your father’s word is more effective than His Majesty’s, is it?”

Minister Song was startled by that!

Instinctively, he studied this junior officer.

Whose reckless whelp was this? He’d never seen him before—how could he speak so rashly!

A mere fifth-rank deputy captain of the imperial guards, daring to make things difficult for him, a second-rank minister?

“Whose household are you from?”

Minister Song narrowed his eyes slightly, thinking to learn just who this presumptuous brat was.

Cradling his sword, the deputy captain smiled lightly. “Lord Song, no matter whose man I am today, you will still have to seek the Emperor’s instructions. Without His Majesty’s verbal command, I will never allow you to take Miss Song away.”

Just as the two were squaring off, they simultaneously heard the sound of horses and wheels not far away.

Turning their heads, they saw that seated within the plain carriage was none other than the Empress—second only to one under Heaven!

Ordinarily, upon the Empress’s arrival, everyone would kneel at once to kowtow and pay respects.

But today… no one moved.

Because earlier at court, when the Emperor flew into a rage and decreed that the entire Zhu family be executed, he had said that Empress Zhu, being of the Zhu clan, was unfit to be Empress, and that he would depose her upon returning to the inner palace!

Seeing Empress Zhu now arrive at the General’s Estate in the plainest of carriages, without phoenix robes upon her body and without the nine-phoenix hairpin upon her head, everyone understood at once—

The Empress had indeed been deposed, and the Emperor had sent her back to the Zhu family.

Since she was no longer the Empress, naturally no one stepped forward to kneel and salute.

“Miss—”

Suqiu, as Zhu Wuhuan had instructed, addressed her as “Miss” after leaving the palace. She spoke and helped Zhu Wuhuan down from the carriage.

Zhu Wuhuan alighted.

Step by step, she ascended the General’s Estate steps.

“Lord Song, Second Sister-in-law—what are you doing?”

She gave Minister Song a brief, cool glance, then fixed her eyes on her second sister-in-law, Song Anqiao.

The look she gave Song Anqiao carried a faint, hard-to-detect disgust.

This woman, too, had a line in the histories.

When the entire Zhu family was sentenced to execution, the Second Madam, Song Anqiao, took the divorce letter, cut all ties with the Zhu family, and returned to her natal home. Her family then sent her to a nunnery outside the city to live in seclusion temporarily.

A little over a month later, the old General returned in triumph. Learning that his entire household had been slaughtered, he vomited blood and died.

Two more months passed before the old General’s remains were brought back to the capital, and the tyrant decreed that he be buried with honor alongside the Zhu family.

Upon learning that the Zhu family had been exonerated, Song Anqiao hurried back from the nunnery to don mourning for her parents-in-law and husband, only to be met with the people’s scorn and spittle.

And then, at that moment, the woman played her trump card!

She told everyone that the reason she had taken the divorce letter and severed ties with the Zhu family was because she had been nearly four months pregnant at the time, though her belly had not yet shown. She had endured humiliation to leave only to preserve the last bloodline of the Zhu family.

For the safety of the child, she had voluntarily gone to the nunnery outside the city.

Now the child had been born prematurely—a boy—and was at the nunnery!

She claimed she was not a sinner but a meritorious contributor who had preserved the Zhu family’s final bloodline.

The people burst into tears.

So the loyal and valiant Zhu family had not been cut off after all; a final bloodline remained!

This was truly wonderful!

By rights, since Song Anqiao had offered such a ready-made ladder, the tyrant Feng Changye should have favored mother and son, allowed the Zhu orphan to grow up well to comfort the spirits of the Zhu family’s dead, and used such magnanimity to soothe the hearts of the people.

Even if it were discovered that Song Anqiao’s child was a fabrication, he should have helped her keep up the lie and allowed her to find some other child to impersonate the Zhu family’s orphan and play out the charade.

But Feng Changye’s tyrant’s mind ran contrary to ordinary reason!