DLWAV CH133

Only then did the crowd finally snap back to reality.

Those standing closest subconsciously looked at Fu Deben’s lifeless corpse, then reached up to touch their own faces—only to find their hands covered in fresh blood.

Only now did they realize that when Ao Ruize had asked them to step back, it was truly because he was afraid they would get in his way. If they had been even half a step closer, they would have followed in Fu Deben’s footsteps the moment Ao Ruize swung his sword.

They had completely misunderstood Ao Ruize!

Wait—

That wasn’t even the most crucial point.

The most crucial point was that Ao Ruize had just murdered Fu Deben!

“Ahhhh!”

When people finally processed what had happened, screams echoed across the courtyard.

Ao Ruize subconsciously covered his ears—because the little system dumpling in his mind was also screaming at the top of its lungs.

“Xiao Ruize, are you insane?!”

The people of Fu Manor finally snapped out of their shock.

Fu Deben’s eldest son, Fu Kaiji, bellowed in anguish: “Father! Father!”

Looking at Fu Deben lying on the ground with eyes wide open in unseeing shock, Fu Kaiji’s eyes turned bloodshot. He instantly drew the sword hanging at the waist of a nearby examinee: “Kill him! Kill him for me—”

Before the words could fully leave his mouth, several stern voices shouted out one after another: “Stop!”

The guards and retainers of Fu Manor subconsciously halted their movements, their hands frozen on the hilts of their swords as they prepared to charge Ao Ruize.

However, Fu Kaiji and his kin were completely beyond reason. They continued to roar hysterically: “Kill! Kill this beast for me—”

Seeing the Fu Manor guards about to charge Ao Ruize again, the men who had just spoken actually stepped forward to intervene: “Stop! All of you stop, did you hear me?!”

Only then did the Fu family realize that the men stepping forward were all high-ranking military officers of the imperial court.

“General Chen, General Long, are you trying to shield him?!”

Fu Kaiji gritted his teeth, his voice laced with venom: “He killed my father! He killed my father—do you realize that?!”

Only then did those military officers realize what they had just done.

They shouldn’t have stepped into these muddy waters.

But it was too late now.

Of course, they would never admit that they had stepped forward simply because they realized Ao Ruize was the son of the deposed Prince Wu.

Restraining their expressions, they immediately drew their sidearms and pressed the cold blades against Ao Ruize’s neck: “Don’t move!”

Then they turned to face the Fu family: “Young Master, Second Young Master… we are doing this for your sake. General Fu was a dignified General of Diyuan and a Count officially conferred by His Majesty. Now that he has been murdered by Wu Ruize, His Majesty will certainly not spare him—”

“So you can completely leave him to His Majesty to deal with.”

“However, if you execute him yourselves right now, it would be taking the law into your own hands. By law, if nobles resort to private execution, the lightest punishment is total forfeiture of titles and official posts. Surely you young masters wouldn’t want the title General Fu fought so hard for to be reclaimed by the court like this?”

The Fu family had to admit that these words made complete sense.

The veins on Fu Kaiji’s forehead throbbed violently. In the end, he had no choice but to shear his sword back into its sheath with deep hatred, fall to his knees before Fu Deben’s corpse, and kowtow heavily: “Father—”

The military officers let out a collective sigh of relief.

Only then did they turn to look at Ao Ruize.

The complex emotions in their eyes could hardly be concealed: “Come, escort Wu Ruize to the Ministry of Justice prison.”

Seeing that his objective had been achieved, Ao Ruize didn’t waste any more words, calmly following them down.

The system dumpling, on the other hand, was beside itself with panic: “Xiao Ruize, you’re courting death, do you know that?!”

His current vessel, Wu Ruize, was the son of the deposed Prince Wu.

Sixty years ago, the five-year-old Last Emperor of the Zhao Dynasty passed away abruptly. The Zhao Dynasty, already teetering in the storm, disintegrated instantly as major regional warlords declared themselves kings.

Among them was the Old Prince Wu.

However, Old Prince Wu was over forty years old and only had one daughter.

Thus, he could only take in a son-in-law for his daughter, and that man was Ji Xiangming.

Ji Xiangming was a junior officer under his command. Although his martial arts and intellect were average, he came from a clean background and didn’t mind that the daughter had been engaged several times before.

Unexpectedly, shortly after taking in Ji Xiangming as a matrilocal son-in-law, a widow showed up at his door with a boy.

It turned out Old Prince Wu had once had a past affair with her, and her son was Old Prince Wu’s biological child.

Old Prince Wu acknowledged the boy on the spot and named him Wu Tong, because Wu Tong looked as if he had been carved from the exact same mold as him, making it impossible to doubt his lineage.

However, Old Prince Wu’s joy did not last long, as he quickly recalled his recent promise to pass his entire legacy to Ji Xiangming and his wife.

An ordinary person might have simply gone back on their word.

However, Old Prince Wu was naturally honest and loyal, and the widow was no different; the only out-of-bounds thing they had ever done was that past affair.

Wu Tong inherited their personality to an extreme degree.

Thus, overriding all objections, they insisted on establishing Ji Xiangming and his wife as the heirs.

Just like that, ten years later, Old Prince Wu passed away from illness. Ji Xiangming became the ruler of the Wu territories, while Wu Tong became the top general under his command.

True to his name, although Wu Tong was not skilled in grand strategy, his martial prowess was unmatched. In every battle, he personally led the charge, and no divine weapon or hidden mechanism could harm him.

Under his leadership, the Wu army gradually overwhelmed other rebel forces, becoming the largest regional power in the Central Plains.

It was during this time that Ji Xiangming’s younger brother and his family were betrayed by a traitor and fell into enemy hands.

Although his brother lacked great talent, he had still performed notable services for the Wu army.

Using Ji Xiangming’s brother and family as human shields, the enemy army pushed all the way into the heartland of Wu territory.

For the sake of the Wu army’s foundation and the lives of millions of citizens in Wu territory, Ji Xiangming tearfully ordered his brother’s entire family to be shot dead at the front line.

Combined with Wu Tong leading a timely surprise attack on the enemy’s main camp, Wu territory managed to turn crisis into safety.

Around this time, rumors began reaching Wu Tong’s ears: The Xiang family originally had two sons, so it was fine for Ji Xiangming to marry into the Wu family. But now, for the sake of Wu territory, Ji Xiangming was forced to shoot his own younger brother. Hasn’t the Xiang family lineage been cut off?

Upon hearing these rumors, Wu Tong naturally felt immense guilt.

Thus, he approached Ji Xiangming and his wife on his own initiative, expressing his willingness to dissolve Ji Xiangming’s status as a matrilocal son-in-law. Furthermore, if Ji Xiangming and his wife’s only son had multiple children in the future, one of them could take the surname Ji.

Ji Xiangming was deeply grateful, promising on the spot that he would leave all the family property to his and Lady Wu’s only son in the future.

Ten years later, when the Wu army unified the world, Ji Xiangming ascended the throne as Emperor Taizu of Yang. He named Lady Wu as Empress and their only son as Crown Prince.

Wu Tong was conferred the title of Prince Wu, and during the rewarding of merit, most of the southern provinces were granted to him as his fief.

At this point, things seemed to end happily.

However, a few years later, Empress Wu and the Crown Prince passed away one after another, and most of Wu Tong’s sons and daughters also died under mysterious circumstances.

Shortly after, Ji Xiangming launched massive imperial concubine selections to fill his harem, even bringing back three illegitimate sons he had left among the common people—all of whom were already married with children.

Wu Tong finally sensed that something was wrong.

So when he learned that a woman had come to his door with a boy, claiming the boy was his son, he immediately had his steward turn her away.

That boy was none other than Wu Ruize.

Not long after, the Southern Rong suddenly invaded.

It was as if they knew every detail of the southern troop deployments, marching all the way to the gates of the Prince Wu’s city. With imperial reinforcements continuously delayed, Wu Tong, holding out in an isolated city, was ultimately killed when the city fell. Ten thousand southern soldiers died with him, and the riches of the south fell entirely into the hands of the Southern Rong.

—Precisely because of this, the Southern Rong became a major threat to Great Yang for over twenty years, until just last month when the imperial court finally quelled the southern region.

When the news reached the capital back then, the court was rocked.

Ji Xiangming, “bowing to public outrage,” revoked Wu Tong’s title of Prince Wu, though he yielded to the court ministers’ wishes and spared Wu Tong’s surviving family.

By then, Wu Tong’s remaining family—aside from a few concubines—consisted only of a single daughter: the very woman who later married Prince Rui as his side-consort, Lady Wu.

Over a decade later, Ji Xiangming passed away from illness, passing the throne to his eldest son brought back from among the commoners—the current Emperor Jianzhao.

The system dumpling rambled furiously: “Think about it! Ji Xiangming’s brother was definitely betrayed to the enemy by Ji Xiangming himself! Later, he shot his own brother and his brother’s family just to gain sympathy and shed his status as a matrilocal son-in-law!”

“Empress Wu, the Crown Prince, and Wu Tong’s children were all definitely killed by Ji Xiangming so he could pass the throne to his own bloodline bearing the surname Ji!”

“That dog emperor’s family already feels the Wu family’s achievements overshadow the sovereign, wishing they could pull up the Wu family by its roots! Exposing your identity right now—isn’t that just shoving your neck straight under their executioner’s blade?!”

“If you still had a few hundred points, we could repeat our old trick and summon the middle-aged man’s group over. But right now you only have a little over a hundred points—it’s impossible to pull that off!”

It no longer had time to regret why, after hearing Ao Ruize’s words earlier, it had opened a new task world under his orders as if possessed.

All it could think about was that they were completely finished!

Unless… it used its own private stash of points to send their coordinates to the middle-aged man’s group.

But those were its private points reserved for supporting its wives in the future!

Ao Ruize, however, remained entirely unbothered.

Even as he was pushed into a dim, gloomy prison cell at this very moment.

“Relax. We won’t be in any danger.”

System dumpling: “Huh?”

On the other side, as the guests dispersed, the news that the deposed Prince Wu had a surviving son—and that he had slain the Count of Diyuan, Fu Deben, with a single sword stroke during the victory feast at Fu Manor—spread through more than half the capital.

In the inner city, within the rear courtyard of the Minister of War’s manor.

“What did you say? Wu Ruize, the son of the deposed Prince Wu, killed Fu Deben with a single sword strike at Fu Manor’s victory banquet?!”

A young lady dressed in fine attire suddenly widened her eyes.

“That shouldn’t be—”

The maid beside her immediately asked, “Sixth Miss, why shouldn’t it be?”

The young lady—Meng Jiao, the Sixth Miss mentioned by the maid—almost blurted out: “That’s not how it was written in the novel—”

She quickly caught herself: “It’s useless telling you anyway. You may leave first—”

Unsure of what was happening, the maid had no choice but to step out.

Meng Jiao grew increasingly restless.

That’s right, she was a transmigrator hailing from the Great Yang of the year 2022.

She didn’t know why she had transmigrated; she only knew that on her birthday, she had made a wish to see Emperor Taizu of Yang—because she was a hardcore fan of Emperor Taizu. Yet the very next morning, she woke up as the only daughter of the current Minister of War in Great Yang.

Her excitement at the time could hardly be described in words.

She had assumed the heavens were opening their eyes to grant her wish.

Then she was informed that Emperor Taizu had just passed away, and as family members of high-ranking officials, they were about to attend Emperor Taizu’s funeral.

She had to suppress her disappointment, thinking that while she couldn’t see a living Emperor Taizu, attending his funeral was still something other fans could never achieve in a lifetime.

Then she was further informed that Emperor Taizu in this world was not the Taizu Emperor Zhou Ruize from her original world, but a guy named Ji Xiangming.

She had every reason to suspect that the heavens were playing a joke on her.

And soon enough, she knew the heavens were indeed playing a joke on her.

Because shortly after, she was told that a close friend of ‘hers’ named Guan Zhen had fallen into the water and suffered amnesia upon waking up.

Guan Zhen + falling into water + amnesia…

She instantly realized she had transmigrated into an old-school romance novel she had read titled Domineering Prince: The Transmigrated Consort Runs with the Baby.

The novel depicted the female lead, Guan Zhen, transmigrating to Great Yang and encountering one high-quality man after another—including Fu Deben, Fu Deben’s eldest son Fu Kaiji, the deposed Prince Wu’s son Wu Ruize, ‘her’ elder brother Meng Yuan, the genius Yao Wenju, the Crown Prince… Ultimately, after experiencing one heartbreak after another, she accepted Prince Rui’s affections and took the Empress’s seat after Prince Rui successfully ascended the throne.

As for Wu Ruize, the son of the deposed Prince Wu, he was a thorough, tragic villain in this novel.

He dreamed of avenging his father and brothers, frequently stirring up storms of blood across the Central Plains for that purpose—poisoning the capital one day, blowing up the Yellow River dikes the next, organizing imperial exam fraud the day after… Of course, every single plot was foiled by the female lead through twists of fate.

Yet he harbored no hatred toward the female lead at all. Why? Because after his elder sister, Prince Rui’s side-consort Lady Wu, committed suicide, he was overcome with grief and happened to run into the female lead, who had just recovered from illness and gone out for a spring stroll.

As a modern person, the female lead naturally couldn’t stand the ancient oppression of women. Upon hearing his story, she helped him curse those who had driven his sister to death, thereby becoming the sole beacon of light in his dark world.

And the reason Prince Rui was ultimately able to eliminate him was that he discovered this weakness, using the female lead’s life to threaten him and forcing him into the open.

Knowing how dangerous this world was, Meng Jiao had decisively chosen to stay away from the plot and lay low.

She reasoned that as long as she waited for Wu Ruize to die and the female lead to secure her position as Empress, she could go back to living a relaxed life.

Although she sympathized with Wu Ruize as a tragic villain, there was also a saying: Mind your own business and stay out of trouble. Besides, his eventual failure was due to his own stupidity—disregarding his family’s blood feud all for the sake of a woman—so he wasn’t really worth pitying.

As for the Yang-Ji imperial family, although none of them were good people, as the saying goes: the winner takes all, and schemes are still a form of capability. They had conquered the realm through their own abilities, so there was nothing more to say.

Just like Liu Bang—he wasn’t a gentleman either, yet future generations didn’t revile him when discussing him. Thus, she bore no ill will toward the Yang-Ji imperial family either.

But now, Prince Rui’s side-consort Lady Wu hadn’t even committed suicide from a ruined reputation yet, the female lead hadn’t recovered from her illness yet, and the main villain had suddenly slain the ninth-tier cannon fodder male lead!

The plot had suddenly gone completely off the rails as if possessed. Wanting to rely on the plot to play the slacker, how could Meng Jiao not panic?!