Chapter 32: I Am Willing to Stake My Head! Bet on Your Death

Catching sight of the ministers’ gazes, Zhu Wuhuan felt utterly exhausted.

But Feng Changye was very pleased!

He couldn’t be the only one misunderstood by palace maids and guards as being hopelessly entangled with the Empress, right?

She should also experience the bitterness of being wrongly accused and unable to clear her name!

While Zhu Wuhuan was weighed down with fatigue, Ji Yunzhang finally finished recounting every word exchanged between her and the Prince of Jin in the garden.

Though there were some discrepancies, the essence was intact.

And because of that very essence, the dozen shrewd ministers present all sharply detected the oddities in the Prince of Jin’s words.

They cast complicated looks at the kneeling Prince.

The accusations the Empress hurled at him were the very suspicions they themselves harbored!

Though her words were conjecture, they sounded entirely plausible.

If the Prince truly intended to use the Empress as his so-called “lifelong love” and Young Master Chengying as his “own flesh and blood” in a staged play, he could achieve several aims at once!

The Emperor, enraged by the claim of a bastard son between the Empress and the Prince, would cruelly execute both the Empress and Chengying by dismemberment.

The Prince would then put on an act of “losing his beloved” and “losing his son.” The Empress Dowager would surely be stricken with grief, hating the Emperor for stealing her son’s woman and murdering his child.

At the same time, once the Emperor’s supposed slaughter of his wife was spread together with the massacre of the loyal Zhu family, and with the Prince fanning the flames, the people would certainly see him as a ruthless tyrant.

Regardless of whether the Empress had proof, the very fact that the Prince foolishly suggested Chengying pose as his and the Empress’s illegitimate child was enough to arouse suspicion.

He clearly had countless other ways to save the boy—why resort to lying about fathering a child with the Emperor’s woman, thereby offending the Emperor?

Unless he had lost his mind… or had ulterior motives.

The latter, naturally, was more likely.

Ji Yunzhang, having finished, stepped aside.

Feng Changye swept his gaze across the ministers’ faces, quite satisfied.

He turned to Zhu Wuhuan. “Empress, is what Ji Yunzhang said true?”

Zhu Wuhuan nodded. “Your Majesty, it is true.”

Feng Changye lowered his eyes to the Prince of Jin, kneeling in the center. “Prince of Jin, is there any falsehood in Ji Yunzhang’s words?”

The Prince sneered.

He looked up at Feng Changye. “Royal Brother, if you wish to kill me, then kill me. Why let Ji Yunzhang fabricate baseless slander to frame me?”

He closed his eyes. “If you wish to condemn me, any excuse will do.”

Feng Changye regarded him coldly. “So, you refuse to admit you ever said or did these things?”

The Prince replied, “I never said them!”

In his heart, he thought: back then, only he, Zhu Wuhuan, and Ji Yunzhang were in the garden. Zhu Wuhuan was the Emperor’s woman, Ji Yunzhang his confidant. If he firmly denied it, who could convict him on just the words of two people loyal to the Emperor?

And even if forced to admit he said it, so what?

Simply suggesting Chengying pose as his and the Empress’s child was hardly proof of treason. Where was the evidence?

He could argue he was desperate and foolish at the time, grasping at straws to save a life. Was stupidity itself a crime?

Feng Changye chuckled lightly.

“You think that if you deny it, I can do nothing to you?”

“The Empress, from your words, inferred not only that you plotted rebellion, but also that the Cavalry General Zhu Huaining’s betrayal at the border, leading to the death of forty thousand soldiers, was your design!”

“If this was indeed your doing, do you think I cannot uncover the truth?”

Feng Changye rose, towering above the Prince.

“Indeed, by the Empress’s suspicions alone I cannot convict you. But since she believes it was you who framed her father, the General, and caused the deaths of forty thousand soldiers, then with such an accuser, I can confine you first and investigate the border incident!”

At these words, the Prince’s face went deathly pale!

He had forgotten this!

It turned out Feng Changye’s true reason for condemning him today was not those earlier suspicions, but the border incident!

Speculations might lack proof, but the border massacre…

His fingers clenched tightly within his sleeve.

He could only pray that the perpetrators had left no trace for Feng Changye to seize.

Feng Changye smirked at the Prince’s forced composure.

Do you really think your deeds at the border can remain hidden?

In history, after the Old General Zhu died spitting blood, with no living accuser and forty thousand soldiers already turned to vengeful spirits, I never uncovered the mastermind—you. Thus you roamed free, even murdering me in the end to usurp the throne.

But this time, you will not escape!

I will not slaughter the entire Zhu clan, and the Old General will not die in despair!

With him returning triumphantly, as a living witness, he must remember the strange events before the forty thousand perished. With his testimony, I will uncover you as the culprit!

Thinking of this, Feng Changye glanced at Zhu Wuhuan, his gaze softening.

No matter what, he owed thanks to this transmigrated woman.

If not for her, he might have once again fallen into the Prince’s trap…

Zhu Wuhuan was startled by the tyrant’s unexpectedly gentle gaze.

Why was he looking at her so softly?

Terrifying!

“Empress, are you willing to accuse the Prince of plotting the deaths of forty thousand soldiers at the border to frame your father for treason?” Feng Changye asked.

Zhu Wuhuan finally understood—his look was asking for her aid!

She steadied her heart, which had quivered under his gaze, and stepped forward to kneel in the center beside the Prince.

Since arriving in Great Ning, this was her first time willingly kneeling.

This kneel was for the seventy-six members of the Zhu family wrongfully killed in history!

To her, it was worth it!

“Zhu Wuhuan is willing to stake her head on accusing the Prince! I beg Your Majesty to confine him first.”

“If the forty thousand soldiers’ deaths had nothing to do with him, if my father truly betrayed the nation and deserved punishment, then I am willing to lose my head!”

“But if it was truly the Prince who orchestrated the border tragedy, then I beg Your Majesty to grant him death—to console the spirits of those forty thousand who died not by the enemy’s hand, but by their own countryman, and to calm the wrath of the Zhu family, nearly exterminated because of him!”

Hearing Zhu Wuhuan’s words, each resounding like a thrown stone, the Prince suddenly turned his head to glare at her!