The entire great hall was deathly silent.
Wen Zhiyun's fingertips fell on the Eldest Prince's wrist, sensing his pulse fade from weak to gone. She stood up and shook her head.
"He really can't be saved? If it was poison, there should be an antidote. Where is the antidote?" the Commander of the Imperial Guards asked.
"The toxins of the castor bean plant are extremely vicious, especially when injected directly into the body," Wen Zhiyun carefully retreated to a safe area. "His Highness has passed."
The person who had just been vomiting blood lay on the golden bricks, his eyes lightly closed, a barely discernible smile at the corners of his mouth.
It was clear that he had truly been freed.
The Commander of the Imperial Guards closed his eyes, full of frustration and self-blame.
Chancellor Sun sighed and turned around. Zhu Changyu clenched his fists, breathing heavily, while a hint of red appeared at the corners of Chang Yan's eyes.
The idiom ‘the winner becomes king and the loser becomes the bandit’ still struggles to depict imperial power. The struggle between life and death is more apt.
Even if the Eldest Prince did not die in the Hall of Supreme Heaven, after another ascended to the throne, they would not have let him live comfortably in the prosperous Jun City.
Or it could be said, as long as the Ju Family existed, as long as the ambitions of Ju Noble Consort remained, what happened today would eventually transpire again sooner or later.
"Was it worth it?"
This question was sighed out once more, only it was Ju Lianruo herself asking.
She sat limply in front of the corpse of the imperial son. Her original air of pride and prestige had been replaced by a dazed despair. Faint traces of white peeked out from her jet-black hair, a merciless testament to the passage of time.
In the past, she had always sworn confidently that even though the imperial son was useless, she could groom an outstanding grandson. With this world under her control, she would be the biggest winner.
Until that constantly useless, constantly beaten and scolded child lay cold on the ground. Her heart was suddenly hollowed out, whistling with the wind.
No longer would anyone affectionately call her mother consort. No one would be so weak that she felt a complicated mix of love and hate, wracking her brains to assist.
She had grown old. How much longer could she live?
Everything she had done was for her child. Now she had no child. What was she still fighting for?
"No, it wasn’t worth it," she answered her previous question. She painfully climbed up from the ground, only to fall again.
"Mother," the palace maid sobbed as she came over to help her up.
Ju Lianruo waved her hand. "Don’t help me up. Help up my child and take him away."
She tried her best to maintain the upright grace with which she came, but could not conceal the hollow indifference in her heart.
She didn’t know if this was her imagination, but it seemed that with every step she took, those locks of black hair turned whiter by degrees until they were tinged with gray.
Unable to bear watching this, the Commander of the Imperial Guards took two steps forward and said, "Mother, you still have a grandson. One of the Eldest Prince's concubines is already pregnant."
"My son is dead. What use do I have for a grandson?" Ju Lianruo said coldly.
The ties between people require bonds. The bond between grandparents and grandchildren is that middle generation – the parent.
With no prior emotional connection and the loss of that bond, where would any sentiments come from?
The Commander of the Imperial Guards fell silent, only able to summon two imperial guards to carry the Eldest Prince’s body away with dignity.
When they reached the square of the Hall of Supreme Heaven, Ju Lianruo suddenly knelt and kowtowed three times towards the direction of the Ju Family.
"Father, elder brother, Lianruo has let you down."
"In the past, I was willing to be a concubine just to marry him, dragging the entire Ju Family into troubled waters. Yet I did not even become a proper wife in the end, bringing endless ridicule and causing father and elder brother to lose face."
"Lianruo held this resentment in her heart, swearing that her son would ascend to the dragon throne, so no one could mock the Ju Family again."
"But now...Lianruo regrets it."
"All those oaths of love being stronger than gold and deeper than the sea, in the end, could never compare to imperial power, and could not overcome suspicion."
"If there was another chance, Lianruo would rather be the wife of a commoner, would rather marry the beggar at the door, than enter this imperial palace and inner palace again."
"Lianruo has let Hong down, has let father and elder brother down, and let the Ju Family down even more."
With so many people around her with differing perspectives, she did not care about anything. She stood up straight and muttered in a voice only she could hear, "In my next life, I will repay all of you."
Consort Ju left and returned to her Chengqian Palace. After washing up clean and applying light makeup to shape her brows, she changed into the dress she loved best from her boudoir. In her room, she swayed unsteadily from the ceiling beam.
The wind blew into the great hall and lifted her skirts, as if flipping through the book of her intense and stubborn life.
The curtain fell on the life of a generation’s beloved consort.
However, the story in the Hall of Supreme Heaven had not yet ended.
The appearance of the Commander of the Imperial Guards transformed the previously disadvantageous situation for the Crown Prince into an advantageous one.
This meant that the imperial guards from the entire imperial city could have arrived and surrounded the outside of the Hall of Supreme Heaven.
Especially after the Commander of the Imperial Guards bowed to Chang Yan, the expressions of all the people behind the Second Prince greatly changed.
"Greetings to the Crown Prince," the cold-faced man said apologetically. "This subordinate arrived late. Please do not blame me, Your Highness. Currently, over a thousand imperial guards are outside the Hall of Supreme Heaven and can arrest the traitors at any time."
It was set in stone that Crown Prince Yu Ce had schemed against both princes, so his status as a traitor was crystal clear.
While Zhu Changhong still had a mother exerting her influence to come help, Zhu Changyu could only bring his followers and wait for death.
Behind him, the platoon leader Li Qiang was already shivering in fear, hesitating over whether to admit his mistake early and beg for leniency.
As expected, the kind of people who could be won over were essentially fickle turncoats.
Zhu Changyu gave a cold laugh and kicked Li Qiang away.
Those few dozen imperial guards could act pretentiously in the Hall of Supreme Heaven, but placed within the entire imperial city, they were far from enough.
Li Qiang had already lost his use.
"Second Prince!" The Commander of the Imperial Guards' expression was solemn as he waved his hand to lead the imperial guards in drawing their blades. "The entire Hall of Supreme Heaven has been surrounded. Please do not act rashly."
Li Qiang was even more muddleheaded, belatedly realizing he had become a sacrificial pawn. His face was filled with disbelief.
"Surrounded? Then what?" Zhu Changyu was still cold and gloomy. "Are you going to imprison me in the dungeons or directly lop off my head?"
"My Eldest Imperial Brother still had fatherly love and motherly love. Even in death, there would be people who shed tears for him while I, as a cursed spawn, deserve to endure the gloom and dampness of obscurity and deserve the contempt of the entire imperial clan. I deserve to be exiled to remote poverty and be an unnamed prince for the rest of my life?"
"My whole life has been arranged so perfectly." His expression seemed to be both a smile as well as weeping. "Consort Ju said she would spare my life while my Father Emperor acknowledged I should not exist, but neither asked me whether I was willing to live this way."
"And even more, no one asked me...if I was willing to struggle to survive like a rat."
Outwardly, it appeared they were fighting over imperial power but fundamentally, it was because they were unwilling to accept what life gave them.
Ju Noble Consort was unwilling to accept that childhood sweethearts were supposed to have a love stronger than gold yet in the end, she could only be a noble consort.
Zhu Changyu was unwilling to accept his predetermined bleak and obscured fate.
They wanted to fight, to seize that supreme position at the apex to prove that the hardship of the first half of their lives was worth it.
Yet imperial power had nothing to do with personal feelings. It depended on the perspective of the incumbent, depended on the ability of the competitors, depended on whether this person could lead the dynasty to prosperity and leave a mark in the long river of history.
"Your Highness, your mindset has gone astray. Sitting on that seat is not the only way to live an outstanding life, nor is seizing the throne the only way forward," the Commander of the Imperial Guards rarely spoke persuasively.
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