Pampered Consort's Acting Awards - Chapter 61

As the oil lamp burned out, the sky was still dark, and the room was filled with a dull, humid atmosphere, as if brewing for heavy rain.

Xiao Yu woke up from his dream, furrowed his brows, and rubbed his chest. He quickly looked at the person beside him.

Qin Ling’s temples were dotted with fine beads of sweat. Her hand was on her abdomen, whispering, “My brother…didn’t betray the nation…”

Xiao Yu’s brows furrowed even more. There was something off in her expression.

He turned to support her shoulders and said, “Ah Ling, look at me.” Qin Ling’s eyes were empty and lifeless as if she was still immersed in a dream. Xiao Yu said, “Ah Ling, wake up.”

She ignored him and cried with her hand on her abdomen, “It hurts. It hurts so much.”

Xiao Yu watched her movements, feeling his spine tense. Could it be that she, too, is dreaming of the past? In the first year of the Yanxi era, after he left the capital, what had she experienced?

Historical records recorded that on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the first year of Yanxi, Empress Su gave birth to a son and then passed away in the Kunning Palace.

Xiao Yu reached out to touch her. Her forehead burned hot, and Qin Ling’s body curled slowly, trembling more intensely.

Xiao Yu shouted toward the court outside, “Someone, come!”

Eunuch Sheng was startled and immediately pushed the door open, bowing his body and saying, “I’m here.”

Xiao Yu took a deep breath twice and said, “Go fetch the imperial physician, quickly!”

Eunuch Sheng glanced at Jieyu Qin lying in the emperor’s arms, his face filled with panic. “I-I will go immediately to summon the physician.”

After a while, the physician hurriedly arrived. He placed the medicine box on the ground and adjusted his slightly askew black gauze hat, saying, “I pay my respects…”

Xiao Yu interrupted him, saying, “Come and check her pulse.”

The physician took a few steps forward, placing a cloth on Jieyu Qin’s wrist. In his mind, he couldn’t help but mutter, “This Jieyu Qin is truly prone to various ailments. Poisoning, fainting… I’ve lost count of how many times it has happened. Well, a delicate body has always been effective in captivating the emperor’s heart.”

“What’s going on?” Xiao Yu asked.

“Jieyu’s face is flushed, and her body feels hot. Judging from her pulse, it’s an attack of excessive internal heat,” the physician explained. “Heartfire.”

“When will she wake up?”

Ning Yuanzheng said, “Typically, when unconsciousness is caused by excessive internal heat, it takes more than a day to awaken. I will first prepare a prescription to reduce the fever. Once the fever subsides, I will prepare two more prescriptions to alleviate the internal heat slowly…”

But Xiao Yu seemed unable to hear the rest of Ning Yuanzheng’s words. His gaze fell upon Qin Ling’s abdomen, and he fell into a prolonged silence.

In her dreams, her belly had always been in pain.

In her dreams, she refused to call for a physician.

Xiao Yu stayed by Qin Ling’s side throughout the morning. The fever subsided after taking the medicine, but there were still no signs of her awakening.

In the afternoon, Eunuch Sheng bowed and reported, “Your Majesty, this is the dossier submitted by Lady Lu Zhi.”

Lu Zhi, the lady in question, was dispatched by Xiao Yu to monitor Consort Xue’s activities in the Xianfu Palace. She documented everything Consort Xue said or did each day, whether she disclosed the events of Si Yue to anyone outside, and every detail, big or small, had to be compiled into a dossier and presented.

However, Xiao Yu had no interest in Xianfu Palace affairs at the moment. He waved his hand dismissively and said, “You handle it.”

Eunuch Sheng said, “Yesterday, Lord Xue sent a letter to Consort Xue. After reading it, she consumed a considerable amount of peach blossom wine and said some things. Your Majesty, please take a look.”

Xiao Yu took the letter.

—— “I have wrongly accused Jieyu Qin in this matter.”

—— “There are numerous coincidences and doubts surrounding this matter. I should not have acted on my own.”

—— “I know His Majesty doesn’t favor me, but Qing Yue, I had always put my heart for His Majesty ever since I entered the palace. I have never had any intention to frame the other consorts. Do you remember, three years ago, when Consort Li came to my palace and drank with me? She suddenly burst into tears and lamented how she had always been a living target, the unlucky one. I have never mentioned this to anyone before. Look at me now, how did I blurt out these things? I must have gotten drunk…”

Xiao Yu’s eyes immediately caught the last sentence.

He looked up at Eunuch Sheng and asked, “Three years ago, when exactly?”

Eunuch Sheng bowed and replied, “Based on Qing Yue’s story, Consort Li came to Consort Xue to cry for help at the beginning of the eighth month of the first year of the Yanxi era. After that, there have been no disturbances between Xianfu Palace and Changchun Palace anymore.”

The focus of this statement was clearly not on the relationship between Xianfu Palace and Changchun Palace but on the timing.

The empress’ due date was the eighth month of the first year of the Yanxi era.

At that time, the Su family had betrayed the country, and the empress was in a difficult situation. Su Huai’an was in the hands of the Xue family, and during this time, Consort Li had softened toward Xue Lanyi. It was evident what her intentions were.

From Li Yuan’s perspective, as long as Xue Lanyi listened to her words and deviated even slightly due to jealousy, she could easily request two pieces of Su Huai’an’s fingernails or flesh and deliver them to the Kunning Palace, resulting in two lives lost effortlessly.

No one was truly foolish in the harem. If Xue Lanyi had been truly drunk, she wouldn’t have been able to speak such words. She was using Li Yuan to express her loyalty.

She had managed to keep the secret about Empress Su’s incident tightly sealed back then, so there was no way she would have spoken out about this matter that day.

Xiao Yu sneered, throwing the document onto the desk, and stood up, saying, “Prepare the carriage to Changchun Palace.”

Changchun Palace.

The palace maids and eunuchs bowed on both sides and said in unison, “We shall follow Your Majesty’s orders.”

Xiao Yu strode into the hall with a cold and stern expression, waving his hand to dismiss everyone.

Consort Li hurriedly walked over and greeted with a bow, “May Your Majesty be well.”

The emperor took his time to let her rise. Li Yuan naturally dared not stand up. She remembered the sudden sealing of Xianfu Palace and felt uneasy, not knowing why the emperor had come today.

Xiao Yu adjusted his robes and sat on the chair, looking at Li Yuan, recalling everything from the dream.

“Li shi, how did the empress treat you in the past?”

Li Yuan couldn’t help but feel a tremor in her heart.

Li Yuan softly replied, “Her Majesty was benevolent and treated me with great care.” After so many years had passed, that man still referred to her as the empress.

“I have investigated the female officials in Xianfu Palace,” Xiao Yu said in a deep voice. “Apparently, you have been treacherous for many years. We underestimated you.”

Xiao Yu’s tone was not heavy, but every word he spoke felt like a nail on a chopping board.

Li Yuan knelt down with a “thump” and said, “I am foolish and ignorant. I beseech Your Majesty to enlighten me.”

“Foolish and ignorant? Not so.” Xiao Yu narrowed his eyes and looked at her. “Do you remember what you said to me four years ago?”

As soon as the words fell, Li Yuan raised her eyes, looking panicked and at a loss.

Her mother had once told her that men in high positions in this world were all the same. They held great power and were skilled in seizing and indulging in various beauties and pleasures of the flesh as they pleased.

Her own father was like that too. Even though her mother was gentle and obedient, with captivating beauty, she could never satisfy her father’s desires.

She thought that a man’s favor was only for the night or in rewards, so she treated the court tributes with indifference, causing no ripples. That was until she met the Great Zhou’s emperor.

She could never forget the first time he walked toward her in Changchun Palace. Tall and upright, with a refined appearance, it was a bearing she had never seen before.

She was filled with joy, eagerly waiting to serve him and become his woman. She never expected that her days and nights of anticipation, her grooming and dressing up, would only lead to one sentence: “The matters of Changchun Palace must not be divulged to others.”

After that, Consort Xue mocked and ridiculed her, while the empress dowager praised and belittled her subtly. She became the target of everyone’s criticism, bearing the weight of that empty favoritism.

And what did she gain in return? Only the emperor’s fleeting rewards, like water flowed by. Rewards that she could never take with her to the grave.

During that time, she felt utterly foolish. Humiliated, confused, wronged—she experienced it all. But in his eyes, there was not even a trace of guilt.

“Your Majesty! I am not someone with sinister intentions,” Li Yuan’s tears flowed uncontrollably. “Four years ago, Consort Xue couldn’t stand me and constantly made things difficult for me. Your Majesty witnessed it all. I was only upset and drank too much, accidentally mentioning that matter.”

“Upset?” Xiao Yu stared at her and spoke sternly, “I recall that out of consideration for the impoverished and sparsely populated kingdom of Goryeo, I exempted them from three years of tribute and allowed trade, benefiting your maternal clan greatly. You know it best. How dare you talk about being wronged in front of me!”

The man’s gaze was icy cold as if asking her if she considered herself more valuable than hundreds of beautiful Goryeo women, or more valuable than a thousand taels of gold, or more valuable than a hundred rolls of exquisite silk and colorful brocade.

Consort Li fell to the ground, swaying back and forth.

The beautiful woman was on the verge of crying with tears streaming down her face. She lamented, “Consort Xue constantly made things difficult for me just because she is from the Xue family. Your Majesty can easily disregard her actions. In your eyes, what am I? Just a tribute?”

Xiao Yu said, “If you were truly virtuous, I would not mistreat you nor would we be in this situation today.”

“But what have I done?” Li Yuan couldn’t comprehend it. Everything she had done had long vanished into thin air with the empress’s death, and no one else knew about it.

“Back then, you were adept at instigating conflicts in front of the empress. Surely you understand everything just fine,” Xiao Yu said.

Xiao Yu turned to Eunuch Sheng and declared, “Li Yuan’s heart is deceitful, violating the virtues of a woman. Therefore, she shall be stripped of her position as a consort. Starting from today, she will be relocated to Qiqu Palace.”

Li Yuan stood frozen in place as if she couldn’t believe her own ears.

Was she going to be stripped of her position as a consort?

Li Yuan looked into his eyes, her breath catching in her throat.

If she hadn’t experienced the immense favor of the imperial court, perhaps she wouldn’t have felt so unwilling.

She had seen countless depictions of the Forbidden City in paintings, and Goryeo’s books described it as “vermilion courtyards and jade pavilions, walls adorned with magnificent corridors.” She often thought those descriptions were exaggerated, but now that she stood within it, witnessing its majestic splendor with her own eyes, she realized such descriptions were not an exaggeration.

When she first arrived in the Great Zhou, neither Consort Liu nor Consort Xue had entered the palace. She only knew that the current emperor had a deeply beloved empress.

She had heard that the empress was the daughter of the duke of Zhen. She was the emperor’s legal wife and carried his first child in her womb.

She, indeed, had seized all the good fortune in the world, Li Yuan thought.

The noble empress treated people kindly and didn’t restrict her much. She could wander around the Imperial Garden with her maidservants.

She once encountered the emperor and empress on a spring night. The palace maid beside her kept warning, “My lady, don’t go over there. That’s His Majesty and the empress.”

She remembered that night, heavy rain pouring down, the night cool, and the wind stirring. The emperor’s large cloak naturally fell onto the woman’s shoulders. He embraced her and whispered in her ear.

They were far away, and she couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could see smiles on their faces.

It was the first time she realized the emperor’s favor could be like this.

Even his umbrella leaned toward her, unaware that the rain had wetted half of his own arm.

Li Yuan went from crying to laughing.

Look, he was completely different when he was emperor and when he was a husband.

Even when the Su family betrayed the nation, he couldn’t bear to strip her of her status as empress.

Li Yuan suddenly stood up and screamed at his retreating figure, her voice hoarse and desperate, “The empress didn’t die because of me. Even the imperial physician knows that she no longer wanted to live.”

Xiao Yu’s footsteps halted.

Eunuch Sheng whispered, “Your Majesty, should we leave some people behind?”

“No need.”