Chapter 27: The Empress Dowager Compromises with Tears

Feng Changye stared into the Empress Dowager’s eyes.

So her bias truly had no bounds?

Coldly, he said, “Then what does Mother want? Since you insist on condemning Our Empress for infidelity, there must at least be a lover, mustn’t there? How could she commit infidelity alone?”

He glanced at the Jin Prince kneeling in the neighboring garden and continued, “Furthermore, Mother keeps saying the Jin Prince is Our own younger brother whom We must protect. And how has he treated Us?”

His gaze turned mocking. “He has coveted Our lawfully wedded wife all along—what a good younger brother he is!”

He looked back at the Empress Dowager, indifferent. “Mother, since your younger son cannot let go of Our wife, is he also plotting to one day remove Us and then welcome Our Empress as his own?”

The Empress Dowager hadn’t expected Feng Changye, who had always respected her, not only to ignore her words but to press her so relentlessly.

He left her not a shred of face!

Furious, she slammed the table. “Do you mean to anger Us to death?”

Feng Changye cupped his hands. “Your son does not dare.”

His stance did not waver. “Your son will say it again: since you wish to punish the Empress with the crime of infidelity, then you must provide her ‘lover’ as well! Without a lover, the Empress is naturally pure and innocent, with no crime to punish!”

The Empress Dowager nearly toppled backward from rage.

So he insisted on dragging Jin’er down with her?

Clutching her chest, she glared at Feng Changye, her voice thick with threat. “Ye’er, will you defy your own mother for the sake of such a wretch? Will you cast aside Us, your mother, for this wretch?”

Feng Changye laughed coldly in his heart. Again!

He had heard such words countless times.

Every time he said the Jin Prince was already of an age unsuited to remaining in the capital and that he wished to send him to his fief, Mother would say something similar.

—Ye’er, if you drive away your own brother now, will you later cease to acknowledge your mother as well?

—Ye’er, you’re busy with state affairs and have no time to accompany your mother. Only your brother comes to the palace daily to amuse and comfort Us. If you drive him away, you will be taking half Our life! Will you watch with open eyes as your mother weeps herself blind and dies?

She always said such things. Did she not know that when she used such threats to protect someone else, her words hurt him too?

Said too often, they chilled his heart.

And at this very moment, his heart grew colder still.

Feng Changye lifted his eyes to the Empress Dowager, his gaze wintry and thin.

“Mother says We are unfilial—heh… You wish to protect the Jin Prince, yet would force all blame upon Our Empress alone. Have you given any thought to Our feelings? The Empress is Our wife! She and We are one. For you to raise up the Jin Prince while trampling her into the mud—how is that different from trampling Us to death?”

He pressed his tone, each word ringing like iron.

“As for you saying We no longer want you as Our mother—We ask that Mother think carefully and not say such things again! If Mother no longer values this bond between mother and son, then We…have no reason to value it either!”

The weight of those words left the Empress Dowager dizzy and reeling; she staggered back, stopping only when her waist struck the cold stone table.

She gripped its edge, lifted her eyes to him in disbelief.

“You…what did you say?”

Her lips trembled. She could not believe that this eldest son, who had always obeyed her every word, would dare say such defiant things—

And before so many people!

How dared he!

She was the one who had borne him, raised him, and helped him to the throne; she was the mother he had sworn in childhood to protect all his life!

Feng Changye’s gaze weighed on her, deep and heavy.

Seeing her like this, he should have held his tongue—but he did not.

Enunciating each word, he repeated, “We said We cherish the bond between mother and son and hope that Mother will cherish it as well.”

With that, he straightened, stared coldly at the distant hills, and ignored how shocked and flustered she was.

His heart, at this moment, was cold—restless with fury.

The Empress Dowager did not know why he seemed suddenly changed, why he dared speak to her like this…

Ha!

It was because, from the mouth of that woman from another time, he had learned that three years hence he would die suddenly!

This was the end result of Mother’s constant partiality toward the Jin Prince, of forcing him with threats of death to keep the Jin Prince in the capital.

He died, and the Jin Prince took everything he had once possessed!

He did not know whether Mother had played a hand in his murder. But he was certain that if not for her constant pressing, he would never have kept that bane, the Jin Prince, in the capital to grow so powerful.

Tell him, then—when he knows that the younger son his mother favored killed him, and then once more sees his mother brazenly favor that younger son before his eyes, how could he remain calm?

He could not!

If Mother continued to shield the Jin Prince like this, he would never again be able to be the good, dutiful son to a kind mother.

Zhu Wuhuan stood quietly to the side, stealing a glance at Feng Changye’s back.

Suddenly, this tall man’s back looked so thin, so sorrowful and fragile…

She spoke to the system in her heart.

【So pitiful. Though he will become a tyrant in the future, right now he’s only a twenty-three-year-old boy—he’d still be a college student in the modern world. Many college students don’t even know how to make money, and when trouble comes they run home to their parents!】

【He worries over the fate of the realm, over everything; he’s already exhausted. Yet he still has a restless mother and a brother forever plotting rebellion to vex him…】

Having pitied the tyrant for a moment, she cheerfully added:

【Oh right! And now he has me—his Empress who plots every day to take him down and be the empress regnant. Aiya, he really is a poor thing! Surrounded by wolves and tigers, he can’t guard against them all, hahaha…】

“…” Hearing her inner voice, the weight and gloom in Feng Changye’s heart were suddenly scattered by her gleeful laughter.

This hateful woman!

One moment she pitied him; the next she laughed in schadenfreude!

Infuriating…

The corner of his mouth twitched upward, then he forced it straight.

He squeezed his eyes shut hard, calmed himself, turned back to the Empress Dowager, and asked coldly, “Does Mother still wish to punish the Empress? If so, We will have Ji Yunzhang act at once—neither she nor the Jin Prince will escape. If you have changed your mind and will not act, then let us move on to the next matter!”

Clutching her chest, eyes brimming with tears, the Empress Dowager looked at him. Meeting his gaze, she knew her eldest son would not relent today.

She cast a look at the Jin Prince, still kneeling in the neighboring garden, and could only swallow all her anger and grievances.

Her nails dug into her palm as she forced out each word. “We…will not pursue it!”

Feng Changye’s lips curved. “Good.”

He then corrected her, “We must amend Mother’s words: not ‘will not pursue it,’ but rather that the Empress and the Jin Prince have been pure and proper from the start, without the slightest transgression.”