The Beast Takes the Bait

The emperor gifted me many rare medicines.

He even allowed me to ride a soft sedan in and out of the palace.

An honor many princesses could never have.

Even the empress’s legitimate eldest daughter received such treatment only after marriage and childbirth.

That night, Prince Ling returned through wind and snow.

The moment he entered, he heard my scream.

“This medicine—this is bloodfall medicine!”

The physician trembled and knocked over the bowl.

Veins rose on Prince Ling’s forehead.

He took up the great blade he had sealed away for years and prepared to storm the palace.

I stopped him.

“Consort Prince, it is His Majesty.”

“It is His Majesty who cannot allow me to bear your child.”

I pointed to the steaming medicine spilled across the floor.

Its thick scent numbed his senses.

Forcing him to remember the emperor’s suspicious eyes.

“I’ll kill him!”

“I’ll kill him!”

Everyone in that room was my person.

Including the physician.

They looked at each other.

I waved them out.

“Consort Prince must not speak recklessly.”

I anxiously covered his mouth.

“If not for His Majesty’s schemes back then, this world might not be his today.”

I knew he still cared.

Years of bitter wind had sunk into his bones.

In one night, he had fallen from beneath only one man to mud beneath everyone’s feet.

One day a majestic prince.

The next, stripped by a decree and baseless crime.

How could he not hate?

My reddened eyes and the blood beneath me reminded him:

The emperor still could not tolerate him.

After that day, Prince Ling became diligent.

He practiced the martial arts he had abandoned.

Secretly summoned old followers.

Those men had been dragged down because of him.

Despite killing countless enemies, they had hidden their names and become butchers, escorts, even brothel thugs.

All to survive.

All thanks to the emperor.

My pregnancy was fake.

The medicine was fake.

The blood was only monthly blood.

For two months, I played the role of a woman who had lost a child.

Prince Ling trusted me completely after my “miscarriage.”

He told me all his plans.

Even the outer villa the emperor had once gifted me, abandoned and overgrown, became his secret training field and armory.

I responded with love.

Then wrote the villa’s location into a letter and sent it to the commander of the imperial guard.

Within a day, the villa burned to black ruins.

“It was the emperor!”

“It was him!”

Prince Ling’s killing intent was fully born.

Soon, rumors spread among the people.

They began calling him Emperor Ling.

The palace heard too.

The emperor’s body could not endure such news, so the chief eunuch dared not tell him.

Outside, however, the court was already nearing collapse.