Chapter 3596: The Most Favoured Woman in the Inner Palace (15)
Chapter 3596: The Most Favoured Woman in the Inner Palace (15)
Ning Shu walked over and asked, “How is the child?”
The court physician rose quickly and bowed to Ning Shu. “To answer Your Highness, the child has simply caught a chill. It is nothing too serious.”
A chill!?
She had thought it was poison.
It was currently early spring and the weather was still quite cold, but how could two children catch a chill like this?
There was a major problem, however. If the children’s high fever did not break, they might not survive. Even if they did, such a prolonged fever could leave them brain-damaged.
“Your Highness, what should I do? My children… what will happen?” Consort Xuan had just finished her month of postpartum confinement. Her face was pale, and she clearly had not yet recovered her strength.
Right now, Consort Xuan was at a complete loss. Seeing Ning Shu, she instinctively turned to her for support. When she was pregnant, Ning Shu had looked after her. During her confinement, Ning Shu had cared for the children, and nothing had gone wrong.
She had only been caring for the children herself for a few days, yet she was already exhausted. Now that something had happened, her heart raced with terror. She felt as though she were being fried in a vat of boiling oil.
Her tears flowed like a leaky faucet, and her expression was filled with utter fatigue.
“Physician, hurry and prescribe medicine. Unfasten the children’s clothes and wipe their bodies down with water. What are you maids just standing there for? Move!” Ning Shu barked at the dazed palace girls.
Ning Shu turned to the female physician and the maid who knew martial arts. “How were the children being cared for?”
The female physician glanced at the weeping Consort Xuan and whispered, “Consort Xuan has been personally caring for the children lately.”
Ning Shu understood. Consort Xuan did not trust Ning Shu’s people and had sent them away.
The two children were dressed in several layers. They could only have caught a chill during the night.
Ning Shu felt the quilt on the crib. It was beautiful and covered in elegant embroidery. When she pressed down on it, however, the filling felt airy. It compressed into a thin layer that clearly offered no warmth.
Ning Shu inspected the thin quilt. “Scissors.”
Xi’er brought a pair of scissors from the room. Ning Shu cut the quilt open. Inside was not snowy white cotton, but rather a mix of blackened, old cotton and cottonseeds.
While the court physician wrote the prescription, Ning Shu had the female physician go brew the medicine. Ning Shu touched the two children and funneled some spiritual energy into their bodies.
The two children knitted their eyebrows in pain. Their small whimpers sounded particularly pitiful.
“My children, my poor children…” Consort Xuan slumped against the edge of the bed, weeping uncontrollably.
Ning Shu found the sound irritating and said, “Stop wailing.”
Then, she said, “Sister, you should go rest for a while. Your crying is distracting the physician.”
Ning Shu looked at the maids. “Help your mistress to her room so she can rest.”
As the maids supported Consort Xuan, a eunuch’s shrill voice echoed from outside the hall. “His Majesty the Emperor has arrived!”
Consort Xuan immediately burst into fresh tears. She cried out to Ao Tianze as he entered the room. “Your Majesty, please save our children! Your Majesty!”
Ao Tianze spoke with a cold, indifferent expression. “How has another accident occurred? What kind of mother are you?”
Consort Xuan froze. Then, feeling wronged, she cried out, “I have been caring for the children day and night without even changing my clothes. Your Majesty, you must believe me!”
Ao Tianze looked at the children, whose faces were flushed red with fever, and then glared at Ning Shu. “And what kind of empress are you? If anything happens to these two children, I will hold you responsible. Why is the children of this emperor’s inner palace so sparse? Hmph…”
Hmph, what hmph? At the end of the day, he just wanted to pin the blame on her.
Ning Shu curtsied and said, “Rest assured, Your Majesty. The children will certainly be fine.”
“They had better be.” Ao Tianze didn’t even glance at the infants on the bed before turning to leave.
Consort Xuan sat frozen like a wooden statue. Her body swayed as she collapsed into a chair and began to sob behind her hand. Why was the emperor so cold and heartless? Did he not care for these two children at all?
They were his eldest son and his eldest daughter. These were the children who made Ao Tianze a father for the first time. Why was he acting like this?
The female physician slowly fed the brewed medicine to the infants. Ning Shu sat in a chair beside Consort Xuan, took a sip of tea, and then spoke. “Do you know why the emperor has that attitude?”
Consort Xuan’s neck felt stiff as she slowly turned her head toward Ning Shu. Her eyes were glazed with a look of dazed innocence. She truly did not understand why this was happening.
Ning Shu said calmly, “Then do you know who the emperor loves most in this inner palace?”
“It… it is Lady Min, is it not?” Consort Xuan thought about it. It wasn’t that he showed Lady Min an overwhelming amount of public affection. However, whenever he visited Lady Min, he would stay the night. When he visited other concubines, he would leave immediately after they were finished, and depart in the dead of night.
“Yes, it is Lady Min. Do you know just how much he dotes on her?” Ning Shu smiled. “In his eyes, only the children born to Lady Min are his children.”
A shiver ran down Consort Xuan’s spine. She began to understand something, yet she still could not wrap her head around it.
“Is that really true?” she asked.
“Do you know why the children in this inner palace are always lost? Why they are always miscarried for one reason or another? Do you know the real reason? And do you know why I worked so hard to protect your children?”
Consort Xuan felt dizzy under the weight of Ning Shu’s words. Her face was pale with horror, and her voice trembled. “No, it cannot be like that.”
“It is exactly as you think. The emperor does not want any children born in the inner palace except for those belonging to Fu Min. The gifts the emperor gave you in the past were all meant to induce a miscarriage. Meanwhile, the lack of heirs in the inner palace is blamed on me, the empress.” Ning Shu stared intently at Consort Xuan. “And that is not even the most terrifying part.”
“The… the most terrifying part?” Consort Xuan was stunned by the massive amount of information. The emperor actually wanted to kill his own children? What family wouldn’t want many descendants and a flourishing lineage? The emperor actually wanted to kill the babies?
“I don’t believe it. It cannot be.” Consort Xuan found it difficult to accept. “Why would the emperor do such a thing?”
“Because of love. Love that is given for only one person.” A smile played on the corners of Ning Shu’s mouth. “What the emperor wants most is to dissolve the entire inner palace for Fu Min’s sake.”
Dissolve the inner palace!?
Consort Xuan’s expression was a mix of a laugh and a sob. “Your Highness, you must be joking. How could such a thing be possible? No such thing has happened in any dynasty. The outer court would never allow it.”
“What if power becomes highly centralized in the future? When the emperor can decide life and death with a single word and the court becomes nothing more than his mouthpiece, do you really think such a thing won’t happen?”
Consort Xuan asked, “What is the point of all this?”
“Love.”
Consort Xuan was dumbstruck. “Just for Lady Min? What right does she have to make the emperor do this for her? By what right? We are all the emperor’s women!”
“That may be so, but that does not mean he loves all of the women in the inner palace.” Ning Shu remained incredibly calm. “I am telling you this because I want you to take good care of your children. Those children are your only support.”