DLWAV CH140

“Good.”

At the prisoner-presenting ceremony, Emperor Jianzhao’s face was flushed with joy.

Although seven years ago, he successfully became the Crown Prince of the founding Emperor Taizu, and ultimately ascended the throne smoothly.

But he couldn’t help the fact that Emperor Taizu was extremely prolific. Throughout his life, he had fathered twenty-one sons and fifteen daughters in total. Besides him, seven other sons had survived to the end, and every single one of them was born to a favored concubine.

Most importantly, as Emperor Taizu grew older, he became quite muddled. In his view, since they were all his sons and he had obtained the empire, his younger brothers would only be able to live at his mercy in the future. Therefore, he felt he had to ensure that they and their descendants lived a life free from worries about food and clothing.

Thus, with a grand wave of his hand, he enfeoffed all seven remaining sons as vassal kings, and even bestowed upon them the most affluent and prosperous prefectures and counties in the Great Yang.

The result was that the annual surplus of these seven vassal king estates was actually more than that of the national treasury.

The key point was that even this would have been fine, but having already obtained so much, they were actually still unsatisfied and even thought about rebelling.

Therefore, he dreamed of reducing the power of the vassal kings.

He never expected that in the short span of less than a month, he would successfully eliminate the Prince of Qinghe and the Prince of Luoyang.

So when he found out that the Prince of Luoyang was having an affair with Noble Consort Ning, his first reaction was actually not anger, but pleasant surprise.

Because this meant he had a reason to eliminate the Prince of Luoyang as well.

Most importantly—the Third Prince indeed had not failed his expectations!

“In the imperial court’s ability to quell the rebel Prince of Qinghe and the traitorous Prince of Luoyang this time, the Third Prince has made the greatest contribution.”

Emperor Jianzhao immediately said, “Men, draft a decree. Starting from today, the Third Prince’s title as Prince Rui is restored. Furthermore, he is granted ten thousand taels of gold and two imperial estates…”

The Third Prince, kneeling below, was naturally so thrilled that his body couldn’t help but tremble.

“Thank you, Imperial Father!”

He had finally waited until this moment.

Most importantly, from this matter, it was already enough to see that the heir to the throne favored in his Imperial Father’s heart was none other than him.

However, all of this wasn’t solely because his methods were so brilliant, but also because the Crown Prince was simply too stupid.

At this thought, he glanced from the corner of his eye at the Crown Prince standing nearby, the mockery and smugness in his gaze almost materializing into substance.

One could imagine how furious the Crown Prince was upon seeing this scene.

But at this moment, the Third Prince—now Prince Rui—had already withdrawn his gaze.

There was also the fact that he could finally free up his hands to deal with that bitch Wu Chuyao and that little beast Wu Ruize.

He fiercely clenched his fists.

If before this he had felt a great deal of pity for Wu Chuyao, then now, he equally wanted to skin her alive and pull out her tendons. No, he wanted to throw her into a brothel and let her taste the flavor of being available to any man and suffering endless humiliation.

Right at this time, the Grand Secretary of the Cabinet stepped forward and asked, “Your Majesty, how should the Prince of Luoyang’s family be dealt with?”

Hearing this, the Prince of Luoyang and his family, kneeling not far away, immediately began kowtowing forcefully to Emperor Jianzhao: “Imperial Brother, Imperial Brother, this subject-brother knows his wrongs, this subject-brother will never dare do it again, I beg Imperial Brother to spare me this once.”

“Your Majesty, we beg you to look at the face of Emperor Taizu and spare him this one time.”

The smile on Emperor Jianzhao’s face vanished in an instant.

Although he was happy that they used this opportunity to eradicate the Prince of Luoyang, this didn’t mean he could tolerate the Prince of Luoyang making him wear such a massive green hat.

Therefore, Emperor Jianzhao said without hesitation, “As a younger brother, you actually committed adultery with your eldest brother’s concubine. This is unfilial and unbrotherly.”

“As a subject, you actually attempted to confuse the imperial bloodline. This is disloyal and unrighteous.”

“Such an unfilial, unbrotherly, disloyal, and unrighteous scum, what face do you still have to live in this world?”

“Prince Rui, you will personally escort him to the imperial mausoleum and order him to commit suicide before it.”

“As for his dependents, they are all demoted to commoners, expelled from the capital, and are never to return to the capital for all eternity.”

Hearing this, the Prince of Luoyang rolled his eyes to the back of his head and passed out immediately.

His family members instantly burst into a chorus of wailing.

“Your Majesty?”

Many ministers couldn’t help but cry out involuntarily.

It was one thing that the Prince of Qinghe was shot to death on Prince Rui’s orders; after all, he had committed the grave crime of treason.

But the Prince of Luoyang merely gave Emperor Jianzhao a green hat. Even ordinary commoners knew the saying ‘brothers are like hands and feet, women are like clothing.’ So even if the Prince of Luoyang was guilty, his crime did not warrant death.

How could Emperor Jianzhao not know what they were thinking in their hearts?

But he could not swallow this grievance.

So he immediately added, “Do not forget, he is also the Prince of Qinghe’s accomplice—”

“Therefore, there is no need to discuss this matter any further.”

Prince Rui made a prompt decision: “Men, drag them all away.”

Seeing this, the ministers exchanged glances and ultimately shut their mouths.

At the very least, Emperor Jianzhao’s excuse was more than sufficient.

Seeing this scene, Emperor Jianzhao nodded in satisfaction.

Then, as if thinking of something, he said again, “Furthermore, have this matter written into the capital gazette. Let all the vassal kings read it, so they know that this is the consequence of heinous treason.”

He thought that after this incident, those vassal kings should behave themselves for a period of time.

This way, he would be able to concentrate his energy on dealing with that little beast Wu Ruize.

Who knew that not long after the Prince of Luoyang was executed, on the very day all the vassal kings received the capital gazette dispatched by the court, just outside the gates of the capital, a large crowd of people in ragged clothes fell directly to their knees upon seeing the massive characters for ‘Capital City’ on the city gate tower, and began wailing loudly.

Passersby nearby stopped in their tracks and looked at them with confused gazes. At this moment, the group also remembered the purpose of their journey.

They were seen taking out a thick roll of torn white cloth directly from a bamboo basket on a young man’s back.

The next second, they worked together to unfurl that torn piece of white cloth.

Written on it were the words: The Prince of Yingchuan and Prince Cheng have colluded with mountain bandits to massacre the common people, an act intolerable to heavenly justice.

Immediately following, their wailing echoed through the skies above the entire capital: “Prince Cheng, in order to seize my family’s thousand acres of fertile land, actually ordered mountain bandits to slaughter my entire clan of three hundred and thirty-two people.”

“The Prince of Yingchuan took a fancy to my youngest daughter and wanted to take her as his nineteenth concubine. When I refused to marry her off, he ordered mountain bandits to directly abduct my daughter. My three sons tried to rescue her and were all murdered by the bandits.”

“My family of eighteen all died at the hands of the mountain bandits as well.”

“We beg the Emperor to seek justice for us, to seek justice for the two million commoners of Changzhou—”

…

Upon learning this news, Emperor Jianzhao’s face turned green.

“What kind of place is Changzhou? It’s right next to the land of our dynasty’s founding! How dare the Prince of Yingchuan and Prince Cheng commit such inhuman acts?”

“The imperial family’s face has been almost completely lost by these two beasts.”

“Where is Prince Rui? Order Prince Rui to immediately take men to Changzhou to investigate this matter thoroughly.”

“If the matter is true, order him to directly arrest the Prince of Yingchuan and Prince Cheng and escort them under guard to the capital.”

But it was already too late. Three days later, upon learning this news, the Prince of Yingchuan and Prince Cheng directly raised an army and rebelled.

It turned out that the Prince of Yingchuan and Prince Cheng had long harbored treasonous intentions. Therefore, the mountain bandits in their hands were bandits only in name; in reality, they were a military force they had single-handedly built.

Most importantly, over these years, relying on the wealth plundered from looting homes and robbing people, their strength had actually long surpassed that of the Prince of Qinghe, so how could they possibly be willing to just sit and await their doom?

After all, this world has always belonged to the capable, hasn’t it?

Just as it was with Emperor Taizu over the Wu family.

And the banner they raised was remarkably similar—the imperial court, in order to weaken the vassal kings, didn’t hesitate to falsely accuse them of massacring the common people. They were forced with no other choice but to rise in armed resistance.

One could imagine how green Emperor Jianzhao’s face turned upon hearing this news.

With the princes of the Ji family rebelling one after another, how would the people of the world view the Ji family in the future?

But what else could he do?

He could only hastily order the Ministry of War to mobilize troops and horses to ride to Prince Rui’s aid.

As a result, the plans they had originally formulated to deal with Prince Wu’s manor had to be temporarily shelved.

The news reached the backyard of the Minister of War’s estate.

Meng Jiao: “…”

Male Lead #6, Prince Cheng’s shadow guard Feng Rui, in danger!

There was only one thing: although Emperor Jianzhao and Prince Rui had both quieted down, the voices of slander against Wu Chuyao among the public were still raging out of control.

All because Jiang Zimo had started taking Wu Chuyao deep into the civilian population to experience the hardships of the commoners.

And in the eyes of those pedantic Confucian scholars, men and women shouldn’t even sit together after the age of seven, let alone grown adults.

Yet Jiang Zimo and Wu Chuyao were of similar age and frequently went in and out together. Even though they had the title of master and disciple, these people just felt that there must be an illicit affair going on between them.

Jiang Zimo was furious.

He was a man with a solid bottom line. He merely wanted to play with Wu Ruize a bit; he certainly never intended to give Wu Ruize a green hat.

The Little Milk Dumpling was also exploding with anger.

Not just because they actually threw dirty water at its ‘wife’, but even more because Wu Chuyao had actually been affected, acting absent-minded during classes for several days in a row.

It was only then that it realized Wu Chuyao hadn’t actually forgotten about being forced to be Prince Rui’s concubine, or almost being assaulted by Fu Deben later on. It was just that her heart was currently consumed by hatred, so she didn’t have much energy left to dwell on those things.

Therefore, the most urgent task was not to teach Wu Chuyao how to handle government affairs, but to reverse her backward mindset, which wasn’t much better than those pedantic scholars’.

Otherwise, after they finished taking their revenge, nine times out of ten, she would break down.

Thus, the next day, Wu Chuyao and her senior maid were taken into a male brothel.

Wu Chuyao: “…”

Ao Ruize, upon learning about this: “…”

The instigator, the Little Milk Dumpling, however, had a totally justified and self-righteous look on its face: “Is there something wrong?”

“The reason Sister is as pedantic as those old fogeys is mainly because what she received in the past were all backward ideas like male superiority and female inferiority, and the Three Fundamental Bonds and Five Constant Virtues—to cure a stubborn illness requires strong medicine. Once she experiences the beauty of men, she won’t have these pedantic thoughts anymore.”

This was a principle it had actually grasped from the ‘sister’ in the previous world.

Ao Ruize: “…”

What else could Ao Ruize say?

He could only say that he hoped the Little Milk Dumpling would succeed.

Right at this moment, a servant boy came to report, saying that Jiang Zimo’s fellow townsman had sent over some more fresh river shrimp, so Jiang Zimo invited him over to have dinner together.

Ao Ruize: “Alright, I’ll head over right now.”

In fact, the Little Milk Dumpling really didn’t suspect a thing.

Even though Jiang Zimo invited Ao Ruize to dinner every few days, it had tagged along every single time.

And at the dinner table, they usually just chatted about local customs and Wu Chuyao’s teaching matters.

As for any relatively intimate contact, there had never been any.

There was only one thing: Jiang Zimo would fall ill every few days. Although it wasn’t a major illness, and he usually recovered the next day after resting for a day, the frequency was even higher than before.

One must know that he had clearly already ingested the supreme body-strengthening potion it had exchanged for him.

So what other reason could there be—

It must be because that supreme body-strengthening potion was a fake, inferior product!!!

At this thought, the Little Milk Dumpling became furious. Instantly abandoning its watch over Ao Ruize, it opened the system mall and went straight to brawl with the supplier.