He blocked Ye Qingtian’s hope with a single word, and was beaten by Ye Qingtian, but was not killed.
Instead, he was imprisoned. He secretly sent people to disguise themselves as Lan Qinglun, intending to catch them off guard and regain the tiger tally.
In the following days, Ye Qingtian maintained good relations with the court officials and appeased the Lu and Liu families. The unexplained deaths of the two imperial consorts had significantly shaken these families’ confidence in the royal family.
In the Empress Dowager’s Changxin Palace.
The bitter medicinal scent lingered. Ever since Murong Chong was abducted that day,
The Empress Dowager, injured by Yun Xiao and berated by her son, had fallen ill and never recovered.
She was thinner than before, her eyesight blurred, and she had to strain to see people and things.
Yet, even in this state, she continued to shed tears, crying out of despair.
Ping An had been taking care of her. Seeing her mistress so gravely ill, she was heartbroken that neither Lord Ye nor the Emperor came to visit.
“Your Highness, please do not be sad, it’s not worth it.”
If only her mistress had let go of Lord Ye back then and truly tried to accept the late Emperor, perhaps the late Emperor would not be dead now, and the Empress would be a woman of noble status.
But a single thought, a single misjudgment, had led to such vastly different karma.
Ping An’s mind clearly recalled the day her young lady walked through Yan Capital, exuding unparalleled elegance, followed by a throng of admirers. But beauty fades quickly; who could have predicted such an end?
It was all karmic retribution.
The Empress Dowager looked at Ping An, tears no longer flowing from her eyes. She narrowed them, finally making out Ping An’s tear-streaked face. Still feeling the pain, she reached out and clasped Ping An’s hand.
“Ping An, this is my retribution. It is all my retribution.”
Only now did she truly reflect. It was all her greed.
If she had pleaded with the late Emperor back then, given his love for her, he would have likely allowed her to leave the palace.
But she had desired unparalleled favor for the Ye family and a noble status for herself, unable to let go of her obsession with power.
Unable to let go, she still yearned for the intense love of Xianghua Yushui. This led her to be entangled between two men, causing the man who loved her deeply to
Die prematurely. It caused her to be abandoned by her beloved in her old age. This was perhaps the most tragic love story in the world.
She had loved her entire life, only to realize in her old age that it was all for naught.
“Your Highness.”
In the sleeping quarters, the two women wept together. Several eunuchs stood by, also shedding tears. Having spent time together, they were saddened by their mistress’s grief.
As they were weeping mournfully, a eunuch guarding the palace doors announced,
“Lord Ye.”
Ye Qingtian could now move freely between Changxin Palace and Jingfu Palace.
The Empress Dowager and Ping An, who had been weeping in the sleeping quarters, stopped crying. The eunuch also ceased his lament, and everyone reached for their handkerchiefs.
Even the Empress Dowager silently wiped her tears, unwilling to compromise her last vestiges of dignity. She had lost love, lost family, and was left with only a pathetic amount of self-respect. If she lost even this, she would truly have nothing left but death.
Ping An rose, tidied the Empress Dowager’s appearance, and then quietly waited by the bedside.
Ye Qingtian strode in, his expression grim, his pupils dark and sharp.
He had lost a bit of weight in these past few days, but it did not diminish his charm. On the contrary, to his usual scholarly demeanor, there was now a touch of fierce extravagance and a more masculine virility.
The Empress Dowager watched him quietly. At this moment, he seemed so distant, so far away that she could not see into his heart.
The scene of them strolling by the lake in the gentle March winds, full of affection, was as clear as if it happened yesterday. Yet today, he was as cold as ice.
Ye Qingtian stood by the screen, gazing at the aged face buried in the brocade silk quilt. Her eyes appeared large due to her extreme thinness, and they lacked their former enchanting luster. Instead, they were hollow, dark, and unfathomable, her thoughts impossible to discern.
He never imagined that the beauty of the past would be so withered today, such a stark contrast. If he had let go back then, she would have lived on in his heart forever.
Now, looking at this emaciated, withered face, he felt a surge of aversion.
All this time, he believed he was different from other men, not a heartless or ungrateful person. He always mocked those fickle men, who failed to cherish affections and wasted their lives in vain.
But now, he realized he was the foolish one. The so-called lingering affections were nothing but a joke.
If Ye Lanzhi had not been a beautiful woman of both talent and beauty that day, would he still have held such a fixation?
Would he have wasted the rest of his life for her, resulting in him having no children, finding himself in dire straits, and growing old without a single offspring?
It was all merely a lust for female beauty. It turned out that all worldly love was built upon the attractiveness of men and women.
Consider how many ugly men and women in the world have written grand love stories. Most of them were talented scholars and beautiful women, heroes and beauties. It was merely a love based on physical appearance.
Ye Qingtian smiled, all illusions shattered. He felt no affection for the woman on the bed; on the contrary, a trace of hatred lingered. His eyes shot out chilling rays, and he spoke in a dark, somber tone.
“Everyone, withdraw.”
In the sleeping quarters, the eunuchs and palace maids retreated at his command. Ping An, however, did not move.
Ye Qingtian knew she would not leave, but he said nothing. He walked to the bedside and stared coldly at the woman on the bed.
“Ye Lanzhi, is this the ending you wanted? The result you desired?
“A femme fatale, the saying is true. Such a harbinger of disaster as you, what kind of chaos have you brought upon others? If not for you, there would be no sorrow for me today, no premature death for the late Emperor, no assassination of the Crown Prince, and certainly no existence of Jing Yi. All of it would be gone.”
His words were sharp, his every sentence bloodthirsty. He stared intently at the woman on the bed, enunciating each word with force and clarity, plunging a person into the eighteenth layer of hell.
The Empress Dowager’s eyes rolled back, and she gasped for breath. She could not cry, could not laugh, could not speak. Only endless despair filled her heart. Whose fault was all of this?
Perhaps it was better to perish, to turn into a wisp of smoke, and never to be human again.
Humans were too terrifying. In the next life, for all eternity, she only wished to transform into a willow sapling, dwelling by the bank, standing in the wind.
Enduring the wind and rain, she would undergo a transformation every five hundred years, to atone for this life.
She thought she would die, but unfortunately, someone prevented her from achieving her wish. Ye Qingtian roared in her ear,
“Ye Lanzhi, do you want to die? Do you want to abandon your mess? You’re dreaming. If you die, I will kill Ping An, kill everyone serving you in Changxin Palace. You don’t want to incur more sin, do you? If you don’t, then live, and witness the karmic retribution you have wrought, witness how you have harmed me and Jing Yi.”
Ye Qingtian finished his outburst, gasping for breath, but the Empress Dowager had absorbed his words. She managed to draw another breath, because she did not want Ping An to die, nor these palace attendants. This was her only wish before death, her only chance for atonement.